Today may well be a big day in the larger scheme of U.S. elections -- a panel headed up by former president Jimmy Carter and former secretary of state James Baker III is calling for a series of reforms to correct the many mishaps that dogged state and national elections in 2000 and 2004. But among the 87 proposed changes, estimated to cost $1.35 billion to implement, is nary a mention of the District's lack of voting rights.

The Commission on Federal Election Reform's report, officially released today, is divided into nine chapters which highlight the shortcomings of current federal electoral law, including voter registration and identification, voting technology, expanding access to elections, maintaining ballot integrity, and election administration. Nowhere is the denial of basic voting rights for the District's 600,000 residents broached, much less considered as an area where reform has long been needed.

The section on expanding access to elections contemplates the re-enfranchisement of felons, but offers no similar consideration of the simple enfranchisement of District residents. While the District is effectively kept from electing voting representatives to the U.S. Congress by constitutional provision as opposed to federal election law, it still bears recognizing that the denial of voting rights for an entire city's residents puts into question the basic tenets of American democracy, those which the report itself noted in its introduction:

Elections are the heart of democracy. They are the instrument for the people to choose leaders and hold them accountable. At the same time, elections are a core public function upon which all other government responsibilities depend. If elections are defective, the entire democratic system is at risk.