Voting matters: a group of experts has some advice on how to improve elections.

• Author: Underhill, Wendy
• Position: ELECTIONS

In the year after a presidential election, legislators get busy trying to address any voting snafus that occurred in their own state. The result: a flurry of bills introduced to improve the system, usually double the number of other sessions. This year is shaping up to be no different.

In Hawaii, where not enough ballots were on hand in some polling places, a bill has been introduced to fix that. In Florida, where early voting was an issue, a bill has been introduced to permit a wider variety of buildings to serve as early voting sites. And in states hit by Hurricane Sandy (and some that were not) 2013 may well be the year when bills focus on solid contingency planning for elections.

Added to those are a host of bills dealing with national "hot potato" issues that surfaced in the run-up to the presidential election: early voting, absentee voting and voter ID.

Responding quickly to election imperfections makes a great deal of sense, but there are other ways to craft good election policy that might take a little more time. One is to consider the advice of experts.

But which experts? Advocates of every political stripe are ready, willing and even anxious to offer their perspectives. Instead of presenting a "one side says this, and the other side says that" overview, we'll examine the advice from the nonpartisan Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project. It was formed in 2000 right after that exceedingly close presidential race, to investigate various kinds of voting technology. Quickly the group realized that technology is related to policy and policy is related to administration and administration is related to reality. So the group's mission widened, with an eye toward gathering the evidence needed for good decision making.

In October 2012 the project released a report, "Voting: What Has Changed, What Hasn't, & What Needs Improvement." It opens by comparing the electoral landscape in 2000 to the one in 2012. The results are encouraging. In 2000, between 4 million and 6 million votes were lost, more than half due to voter registration problems, and others to faulty voting equipment and polling place problems. Changes made in the aftermath of Bush vs. Gore, however, have roughly cut the number of lost votes in half.

Good news, but there's still room for improvement, the report suggests. It presents 17 recommendations on how the nation can move closer to running elections in which every legal vote counts. Charles Stewart III, MIT professor and the Voting Technology Project's co-director, narrowed the recommendations to the following eight that...