Forget federal fix

Of all the things that deserve the federal government’s focus right now, the last is the reform of election laws.

Yes, it’s shameful that 102-year-old Desiline Victor of Miami faced a six-hour-long line when she showed up to vote last November. Indeed, as many as 201,000 frustrated Floridians left the polls before voting that day, according to an analysis by an Ohio State researcher for the Orlando Sentinel.

So on election night, President Obama was right to say “we have to fix that.”

But during his State of the Union address, at which Victor was an invited guest, the president was wrong to suggest a federal fix for standardizing howelections are held across the country. Aonesize-fits-all formula is not the most effective and efficient way to manage elections from Miami, which experienced long lines, to Milton in Florida’s Panhandle, which did not.

Election laws should remain a state issue, except where wholesale discrimination is found in people’s right to vote. And the responsibility for managing an election should remain a local matter, which is why we elect local supervisors of election, presumably because they know their communities best.

Besides, it’s not as though Tallahassee hasn’t gotten the message about the need to improve Florida’s dead-last performance in calling the presidential race.

Change is needed to keep Florida from again becoming an Election Day laughingstock.

But what that change should be, and who should pay for needed changes, should remain in state and local hands.