New York is criminally negligent on the issue of election reform. At least that’s what the Justice Department says, after suing New York for being the worst state in the nation when it has come to adopting the federally mandated Help America Vote legislation.

Last week, the New York State Board of Elections, charged with responding to the federal lawsuit, missed its first – self-imposed – deadline to getting election reform back on track in the Empire State. It is a comedy of errors so typical of state government that we’ve become numb to it.

But there may be a benefit to the newest example of incompetence – acknowledgment the New York political establishment cannot reform itself. Sure, the legislature may make a few cautious gestures when the electorate is angry, but in general they’ll get away with as little as possible.

Which is why this year, with virtually all the statewide offices being abdicated at the same time, the time is right for some spring political housecleaning in New York State. In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg has an opportunity to use his current wealth of political capital by making election reform a marquee accomplishment of his administration.

Some people get nervous around the word reform out of concern that it can cloak unwise initiatives under the glow of a good government label. So let’s clarify our terms: election reform is any measure which would open the political process, level the playing field, and increase accountability for elected officials. It’s about ensuring fair and competitive elections. Sure, it’s a little Mr. Smith Goes to Washington – but what’s wrong with that?

The good news is that there is already a growing consensus among this year’s gubernatorial candidates in support of perhaps the most ambitious and far-reaching election rules battle in the nation – redistricting reform.

All the major candidates for governor to date – Eliot Spitzer, Thomas Suozzi, William Weld and John Faso all say they support some form of redistricting reform. “That’s a huge step forward,” comments Dick Dadey, the executive director of Citizens Union, a group on whose board I sit and that is hosting a symposium on redistricting in conjunction with Baruch School of Public Affairs this coming Friday.

Other good ideas are emerging from the early policy debates in the governor’s race. Mr. Weld has advocated convening a new state constitutional convention to bring the ballot referendum process to New York, redistricting reform through a nonpartisan redistricting commission, and term limits for politicians and party leaders in the legislature.

His opponent in the Republican Primary, John Faso, shares many of the same goals, especially term limits and redistricting – although he has reservations about non-partisan redistricting commissions. “I served on the Legislative Redistricting Task Force in the late 1980s and the early 1990s in the State Assembly,” Mr. Faso said, “It is highly unlikely that left to their own devices the legislature will do the right thing.” Instead, Mr. Faso supports a legal and statutory approach to redistricting reform backed by a strong executive who would veto gerrymandered districts passed by the legislature.

While the devil may be in the details, the larger point is that the tide its turning against the rigged system that has resulted in a 98.5% re-election rate to what has been called “the most dysfunctional state legislature in the country.”

In New York City, continued legal wrangling over corruption in the Brooklyn Democratic machine has created another opportunity. The party boss controlled nominating convention process for State Supreme Court Judges was declared un-constitutional. Mayor Bloomberg’s solution has been to advocate for the non-partisan screening panels to push merit selection of judges.

But maybe it’s time to the mayor to think bigger. The issue of judicial selection makes the partisan process seem all the more absurd. After all, judges’ essential responsibility is to enforce equal justice under law. A nonpartisan election process could be the key – following the nonpartisan election system in currently in place to fill open city council seats.

It is a step that would make sense for Mayor Bloomberg. The mayor’s broad popularity in his second term is sealed by the sense that he stands for good government and managerial competence. These are unquestionably positive associations, but they fall short of a sharply defined profile that translates to a specific political legacy. The mayor could sharpen the edge of his good-government legacy by making new run at citywide election reform.

The mayor feels understandably burned by the failure of his courageous effort to bring non-artisan elections to New York through Charter Revision in 2003.But he should feel more burned by the fact that this reform promised in his first campaign was set up to fail by aides who encouraged it be put forward in an off-year election when only city council races were on the ballot – inspiring just 13% turnout dominated by Democrats. The results have been used to discourage future efforts.

But armed with his renewed political capital – and buoyed by the fact that there has been a 300% increase in the number of non-affiliated voters in NYC since 1994 – the mayor should consider building a case for comprehensive local political reform, including either nonpartisan elections or open primaries from the ground up instead of the top down. He might find that the political winds have shifted in his favor.

In both the case of local and statewide election reform, there needs to be organized pressure from the public and an attempt to frame the debate in favor of a bipartisan package of best-practice political reforms.