Mike Blake/Reuters

Everyone knows that Washington is mired in gridlock. But on what has been one of our most partisan, divisive issues, something strange is happening in our nation’s capital.

After three years of pitched battles in the states over who can vote and how much trouble they should have to go through to do so, two bipartisan initiatives out of Washington, D.C., are providing real hope that reform may be around the corner.

On Wednesday, the bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration, co-chaired by the lawyers for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns, issued a report recommending critical reforms to tackle long lines and other election challenges. And last week, a bipartisan group in Congress introduced a bill to fill the hole created by the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision gutting the heart of the Voting Rights Act.

These are two serious bipartisan efforts to fix our voting system’s biggest problems. These proposals aren’t perfect; there is much more we need to do. But, if enacted, they would represent a dramatic step forward.

The problems these efforts target are widespread. According to a survey by the presidential voting commission, nearly 50 percent of Americans live in precincts that had long lines in 2012. And long lines are just the most visible manifestation of an aging voting system in need of reform. There are also the 3 million Americans who were not able to vote because of voter registration problems, and the millions more whose votes did not count because of issues with voting machines, poll sites, or misguided state requirements. All this points to the need to bring our system into the 21st century.