You know those moments when you open up a newspaper or magazine and you start nodding your head? You're in such complete agreement that it feels like you wrote it. Or maybe you're just happy to have your thoughts confirmed, but possibly with a touch of envy, like "Gee, I wish I'd said that."

Since the April Primary, the Election Reform Network has been slogging away at promoting changes based on the serious problems we found at the polls on April 22 - along with dealing with an unfortunate public relations skirmish with the County Department of Voter Services when they denied (at least publicly) and twisted our findings. Still, we continue to work with the County to prod them to make important operating improvements for the upcoming election and have held constructive meetings and discussions with the Election Board and the Department to that end. It’s a start.

Our concerns are many: clarifying procedures for the use of emergency ballots; facilitating the recruitment and placement of badly needed poll workers; improving poll worker training; advocating for improvements in the county's website that make it easier to verify registration status and/or register to vote; and increasing the number of phone lines to the Election Board on election day to ease communication bottlenecks with polling places. We are also monitoring the County's plans for new federal funds for elections, including the possible purchase of new vote machines, and asking questions about the rationale behind the allocation of the machines across the county's 416 election districts in the hope of speeding things up at some polling places.

In addition, we are working with CREDO Mobile’s Pollworkers for Democracy, a project to recruit and train poll workers, and the good news on this one is that the county seems willing to use the project as a resource for finding new poll workers. Lastly, we've joined with national and statewide non-partisan advocacy organizations to monitor Pennsylvania's computerized voter registration data base.

It's too early to tell where all this is headed, but you know that queasy "voice in the wilderness" feeling? We focus on the mind-numbing details of the election (we're not alone, of course, there's a movement out there), but sometimes it seems like the rest of the world is just caught up in the shouting about McCain and Obama.

And then comes the recent editorial from The New York Times like a refreshing blast of reality:

but one thing is certain: voters will have trouble casting ballots on Election Day. In a perfect world, states and localities would handle voting so well that the public could relax and worry about other things. But elections are so mismanaged - and so many eligible voters are disenfranchised - that ordinary citizens have to get involved.

It continues:

The civic books say that any eligible voter who registers in time can cast a ballot on Election Day. The reality is not so simple. People file registration forms that are not properly processed, or their names are wrongly purged from the voter rolls. They are required to present photo ID even when the law does not require it. They arrive at polling places and find machines that do not work properly or lines that take hours to get through.

And, finally, this:

Jonah Goldman, a lawyer with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law who works on Election Protection, notes that "if there were the investment in voting infrastructure that there should be, we would be totally unnecessary." Until that happens - and until elections are run entirely by people who want every eligible voter to be able to cast a ballot - smart, well-coordinated volunteer efforts are crucial.

Well, I wish I'd said that. But come to think of it, that's pretty much what many of us have been saying since we started the Election Reform Network back in 2005. We'll do our best in the weeks ahead to keep you informed on the prospects for a smooth and secure election on November 4 in Montgomery County and across Pennsylvania. Click here for the complete New York Times editorial.