James A. Gardner had this article in The Regulatory View. Here is an excerpt:

Across the nation, Republican-controlled states have generated a tsunami of legislation making it more difficult to vote. For half a century, Americans have relied almost exclusively on federal courts to maintain a democratically legitimate system of free and fair elections, at all levels of government. Reliance on the courts is unfortunately no longer a viable solution. The only way to secure free and fair democratic processes is through direct regulatory intervention by the U.S. Congress.

America’s path toward genuinely fair electoral competition has been long and meandering. On one hand, regulatory innovations have greatly improved the capacity of elections to register accurately popular sentiment. These include expansion of the franchise, the secret ballot, the initiative and referendum, civil rights legislation, independent districting commissions, campaign finance regulation, convenience voting, and many others.

On the other hand, the United States has a long history of state legislative manipulation of the rules of democracy. From the suppression of representation in newly settled areas of the original colonies to the eponymous 1812 gerrymander of the Massachusetts senate, through Jim Crow restrictions on voter eligibility, state legislatures have sometimes undermined rather than facilitated fair expression of the voters’ will.

Read the full article here.