After months of arm-twisting and cajoling for federal voting legislation in 2021, Democrats’ path for sweeping federal voting legislation is coming to an end. Centrist Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin would not blow up the filibuster, and the legislation failed to attract more sympathetic Republicans such as Mitt Romney and Susan Collins.

Still, leaders in both parties agree that there is work to be done to make the process of voting less frustrating and to rebuild trust after 2016 and 2020. If they are serious about finding agreement before 2024, now is the time to empower states to implement better election practices through incentive-based reforms like this one recently proposed by five nonprofit think tanks spanning the political spectrum.