Electoral rules have always been subject to abuse. In post-Revolutionary America, voter property qualifications were widespread. In early twentieth-century New York City, attempts were made to disenfranchise Jewish voters by limiting voter registration days to Saturdays and, revealingly, Yom Kippur. Black Americans endured decades of arbitrarily administered literacy tests. And in recent years, Arizona and Montana have banned third-party ballot collection, a practice widely utilized by Native Americans in those states.

These stratagems were effective (even if morally repugnant) because their effects were foreseeable. Political actors could accurately predict voting patterns based on demographics alone. In our present environment, however, the political and participatory implications of many electoral rules are less apparent. What was once conventional wisdom – that increasing voter registration rates and reducing administrative burdens on voting would benefit the Democratic Party – is now in question. As the electorate further divides along socioeconomic and educational lines, non- and infrequent voters (both of whom tend to be poorer and less educated) are, according to some studies, slightly more likely to favor the Republican Party. Moreover, the expanding Latino vote is increasingly divided between the two major political parties. Whatever challenges these developments pose for political strategists, they present an opportunity for election reformers and fair-minded elected officials.

The reason is simple. In this deeply contested political era in which many elections are decided by very small margins, both parties have an incentive to simplify the electoral process and bring more voters into the fold. And given the now unpredictable consequences of various election administration policies, such simplification can occur behind a veil of ignorance, without knowingly sacrificing an electoral advantage. The upshot would be more efficient and inclusive election administration for all.

Consider voter registration. When compared with peer democracies, voter registration rates in the United States appear meager. In the 2024 presidential election, around 74% of the eligible population was registered to vote; in peer democracies the figure tops 90%. The disparity is easily explained by the fact that peer democracies are much more proactive in getting people registered. That said, several states, led by Oregon and Colorado, have experimented with novel forms of “secure” voter registration that automatically register voters during government transactions. The results are quite promising. In this unique moment, when the partisan effects of increased voter registration are unintelligible, more states should economize the process by adopting automatic, online, and expanded opportunities for early registration. The political climate can only benefit from integrating more of our fellow citizens into the engaged political community.

Along similar lines, the moment is ripe to finally reach some agreement on voter identification laws. The utility and impact of such laws have long been points of profound political disagreement. At present, though, significant evidence suggests that the partisan impact of such laws is negligible. And to the extent that the acquisition of a qualifying identification is burdensome, such burdens disproportionately fall on lower-income, less-educated voters who, as noted above, increasingly favor the Republican Party. These dynamics present a rare opening for a détente. As others have suggested, Democratic Party officials might be open to accepting voter identification requirements in exchange for other reforms. Alternatively, Republican Party officials might relax or eliminate such requirements as they come to appreciate their potential to harm the party’s prospects. Of course, either solution would require a perhaps infeasible about-face on the part of the parties. The Democrats have long decried voter identification laws as voter suppressive. And the Republicans have long defended such laws as a sacrosanct means of combatting voter fraud, often perpetrated, it is alleged, by Latino immigrants. Perhaps the Democrats might accept a voter identification program in which they are both cost free and universally distributed. Or perhaps the Republicans will come to see the voter fraud narrative as self-defeating insofar as it denigrates an increasingly influential constituency of Latino voters, thereby obviating the party’s steadfast commitment to strict voter identification rules. The point is simply that such prospects are only plausible because, in the current environment, the partisan effects of voter identification laws are seemingly nominal.

These two examples hardly exhaust the universe of electoral reforms that might find purchase despite the prevailing political situation. Elsewhere, in endorsing states’ obligation to provide a baseline level of election services to all voters, I identified polling place wait times as another issue upon which bipartisan consensus might be found. Too many voters are subject to unreasonable delays at their polling sites, with low income and minority voters enduring the longest lags. The case for reducing polling place wait times is only strengthened in light of the reshuffling of the electorate. That is, to the extent that polling place disparities reflect an effort by legislators and election officials to marginalize certain groups of voters believed to be political adversaries, the newly configured electorate complicates those efforts and favors the equitable standardization and professionalization of the voting experience.

There are certainly many other examples of how the ongoing political realignment might foster productive electoral reform. To be sure, sanguinity at this moment would be naive. But politics inevitably evolves capriciously, and reformers must look to capitalize where and how they can.