Closing The Barn Door?

NY Times looks at ending the Katherine Harris/Kenneth Blackwell system:

“I think we are reaching a crunch point where Americans are coming to realize that they cannot afford an election that is run by people who have a stake in the outcome,” said Robert Pastor, director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University and executive director of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, a panel convened in 2005 to recommend ways to improve elections.

Past efforts have focused on fixing the machines rather than the people who run them, Dr. Pastor said. But recently, several states have taken steps to insulate election administration from the influence of money and politics.

In the past year, Colorado, Massachusetts, Ohio and Virginia have enacted laws limiting the political activity of election officials. In at least seven states, the secretaries of state have said they will voluntarily refuse to serve on political campaign committees or publicly endorse candidates, according to the National Association of Secretaries of State.

Of course, it's too late to prevent these kind of 'accidents':

In 56 of Ohio's 88 counties, ballots and election records from 2004 have been "accidentally" destroyed, despite a federal order to preserve them...