Time to Extend the Voting Rights Act

Congressional Republicans have been sandbagging the Voting Rights act (big surprise, right?).   So instead of just extending it, we need to update it, to take care of some problems we noted in this year's election:

• Voter suppression:  attempts at voter suppression of any kind need to trigger some intense Federal scrutiny.  The Old South is not the only place where the Powers that Be would like very much to prevent Certain People from voting.  Long lines (9 hours in some cases) are prima facie evidence of voter suppression (or incompetence).  So are shortages of materials (paper ballots, for example).
• Nonpartisan election commissions:  This business of having a partisan office determine all the important parameters of the election has got to stop.  At best, it looks bad.  At worst, it's outright corruption.
• ID:  Needs to be some kind of Federal standard; most of the State ID requirements are unsubtle attempts to suppress poor and elderly voters.
• Electronic voting machines:  Ideally, the voter should mark a card ("fill in the bubble"), which most voters have been doing since elementary school.  Then you can have a machine count the ballots, but there's always the possibility of a recount.  Diebold- type (unauditable) machines must have the source code escrowed, and random machines examined to make sure that the code in the machine matches the code on file.  Any change to software must be tested, tracked, and audited; "midnight upgrades" of any kind are Right Straight Out.  Also, the entire system needs to be auditable (and audited!).  For example, one report from 2008 (hopefully obsolete!) said that the Diebold central vote-tabulating system was based on a Microsoft Access database, with the default password.  First, the password is an elementary mistake.  No programmer with any experience at all should do that.  Second, nobody who knows databases uses Microsoft Access for anything more important than a Christmas card list.  It's just not sufficiently reliable.  The pros use Oracle, or if you want to stay in the Microsoft universe, SQL Server.
• "Instant runoff":  Optional, but very desirable.  This would be ideal for things like primary and local elections, which can have many candidates.  Runoff elections are expensive and inconvenient, and a "straight plurality" leads to elections where the winner gets, like, 15% of the vote.  There are all sorts of schemes, ranging from "first and second choice" to the full-up "Australian ballot".

While we're at it, Republicans have been complaining for years about "voter fraud", which to them means people voting who shouldn't.  We need to educate people about what real voter fraud looks like.  Hint -- it's not retail (one vote at a time); it's wholesale (boxes full of pre-marked ballots).