Democracy means that you have the right to vote without intimidation and undue burdens.

When public access to voting is impaired or when public confidence in voting is diluted, democracy suffers and our freedom is less secure.

It's an embarrassment that we don't have a broad enough consensus among political leaders that true reform should take place.

And when people in power can stay in power they do very little to tinker with the apparatus that put them in power.

What we say is that democracy means that you have the right to vote without intimidation and undue burdens. But if you stand in line for six hours, technically, today there is no document, no standard, no law that says that that's wrong.

Voting in this country has essentially been relegated to a very fledging group of election officials, who receive no training and operate on shoestring budgets on one hand, and political consultants whose job is to get their candidates elected on the other. And when you have that kind of scenario, it's really hard to describe yourself as a vibrant democracy. It's an embarrassment.

I was the Secretary of State of New Jersey in November 2000. I paid careful attention to the challenges that stemmed from inadequate voting systems in various places.