The world’s greatest democracy is not so great at running elections, as we all saw in 2012. There were, among other things, long lines at polling places, botched registrations, and mysterious rules on absentee ballots. As President Obama declared victory on election night, he wanted to do something about these problems. He appointed a (very) bipartisan commission, chaired by two self-described “partisan hacks”: Robert Bauer (Obama’s personal lawyer and his one-time White House counsel) and Benjamin Ginsberg (the national counsel to the Romney campaign and many other Republican causes). Wednesday, after six months of work, the “lines commission,” as it’s known, released a hundred-page report. Notwithstanding the strong party affiliations of its leaders, the group was unanimous in its recommendations.

It’s an unexpectedly bold document, especially in light of the strong partisan differences over voting these days. Ever since the Republican landslides of 2010, states have been tightening the requirements to vote, and Democrats have cried voter suppression. The commission avoids the especially controversial issues of photo-identification requirements and the future of the Voting Rights Act, but it strikes out in a clear pro-voting direction. The key recommendations come in four areas:

• More early voting. More mail and Internet voting would take care of the biggest problem in 2012, long lines. This is a clear embrace of a Democratic priority.

• Easier voter registration, including online. Again, this is a top Democratic priority, though the commission also gives a nod to technologies that compare databases and allow purges of ineligible voters, which have been a Republican cause.

• Improved voting technology. After the 2000 fiasco in Florida, the federal government subsidized the purchase of many new voting machines, but these are now approaching the end of their useful lives. The commission recommends ending the hegemony of the specialized voting machine and allowing voters to use their own computers to print out their ballots at home, like they do with boarding passes. With the right security in place, this makes all the sense in the world.

• The legacy of Newtown. The commission learned, surprisingly, that in the wake of school massacres, many schools are determined to keep strangers off the premises at all times—and that includes voters. Schools represent about twenty per cent of all polling places, and the commission proposed putting even more to use, so this creates a serious problem. The report recommends “taking all the steps necessary to address these legitimate security concerns,” as well as trying to arrange days when children aren’t present—ones set aside for teacher training, for example—to coincide with elections. (Election Day is only a holiday in some states.) Again, early voting and improved technology can address these issues.

As with all federal commissions, the question arises: so what? What impact will these high-minded suggestions have in the real world? The recommendations do not require any federal legislation to be implemented. The real targets are state and local officials who run elections on the ground.

Commission members plan a roadshow to make their case, but it’s far from clear whether there will be the will, or the money, to put their suggestions into practice. Voting rules may have become partisan in recent years, and yet election officials themselves tend to be somewhat removed from the fray. That—and the self-evident logic of the proposals—give the commission members hope.

Democrats are likely to greet the recommendations with some enthusiasm, though many will regret the absence of proposals on photo identification and the Voting Rights Act. A person familiar with the commission’s deliberations noted that these topics were not within the group’s charter and, besides, may not be as important as their high profile suggests. “There is a lot of sound and fury about photo I.D., but it pales in comparison to long lines, registration systems, and absentee ballots in terms of the number of people affected,” this person said. “We are talking about tens of millions of voters affected by these issues.”

The recommendations will test Republicans. If, as many Democrats believe, they simply want to reduce turnout because they have a tendency to win low-turnout elections and lose high-turnout contests, Republicans can ignore or nitpick the recommendations, despite Ginsberg’s impeccable partisan credentials. (I first met both Ginsberg and Bauer when they were on opposite sides of the Florida recount, in 2000.) Or the commission’s work could serve as a model of bipartisan coöperation, with the two sides putting aside their differences in the interest of setting up fairer fights in the future. That, in any event, is today’s fond hope.

Photograph by Julie Jacobson/AP.