Here’s a project for the next president: Fix the goofy system that will elevate him or her to the nation’s highest office. Like most of our elections, Super Tuesday offered too many examples of dysfunction in the basic machinery of our democracy.

Los Angeles County, the electoral mother lode of the day’s biggest prize, reportedly forced voters to wait as long as three hours in several locations. Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders’ campaign was alarmed enough to seek an emergency court order to keep the polls open there.

The day’s second-largest battleground, Texas, fared worse, leaving voters in Houston waiting to cast their ballots after midnight, five hours after polls were scheduled to close, as Super Tuesday blurred into a not-so-super Wednesday. The Texas Civil Rights Project criticized the delays as disproportionately disenfranchising predominantly African American and Latino neighborhoods.

The reasons for such failures are as potentially varied as the patchwork of state and local jurisdictions that run American elections — and generally defy wholesale reform.

Officials cited poll worker absenteeism in some precincts, possibly due to fears of the coronavirus outbreak, as one factor. High turnout for the closely followed Democratic presidential primary caused further strain, they said, potentially compounded in California by mail-in voters delaying their choices and requesting new ballots as the race evolved.

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla’s office also reported that technological difficulties prevented officials in San Mateo, Contra Costa, Napa and a dozen other counties from accessing the state’s voter database for up to an hour and a half, slowing voting in those areas. The state information has become more important as San Mateo, Santa Clara and other counties have adopted new election procedures under a 2016 state law. It’s phasing in universal mail-in ballots and “voting centers” in place of traditional local polling places, giving each county’s voters a choice of locations to cast or drop off ballots, register to vote and access other services.

That and other reforms have helped make registering and voting in California easier than ever. Padilla’s office reported last week that 20.7 million Californians were registered to vote, a 15% increase from four years ago. That’s nearly 82% of eligible voters, the highest pre-primary registration rate in 68 years.

Such reforms can create more opportunity for error, however. While few major issues were reported in the Bay Area, voting delays prompted calls to extend polling hours in Fresno as well as Los Angeles, where local reforms added another layer of complications. To the extent such delays discourage voters, they undermine the noble purpose of innovations designed to increase participation.

While California officials said nothing malicious was suspected in Tuesday’s mishaps, federal intelligence and law enforcement officials have warned that the 2020 election faces the additional threat of foreign interference of the sort that took place four years ago. Our readiness to counter such attacks won’t be helped by the fact that their most prominent beneficiary, President Trump, has consistently downplayed and denied them.

Even if the current contest yields an administration determined to treat that danger with the seriousness it deserves, Tuesday’s elections were a reminder that we have more work to do.

This commentary is from The Chronicle’s editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.