Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

Democrats Get Serious About Voting Rights

The party's more aggressive approach has some flaws, but it is much improved over 2012.

July 6, 2016 at 2:00 PM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

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The Democrats are going on the offensive to make voting easier. The draft language in the party's 2016 platform is much stronger than it was in 2012, and that's mostly good for democracy.

The party's shift from its defensive crouch started in the states, with the adoption of automatic-voter registration rules in Oregon, California, West Virginia, Connecticut, Vermont and Illinois. Hillary Clinton endorsed these efforts last summer, and now the national Democratic platform is being written accordingly.