A dozen years have passed since the Bush-Gore presidential election debacle in Florida. A decade has passed since Congress approved the Help America Vote Act in response to the Florida events. The law required states to modernize their voter registration and vote tabulation systems.

California has received $380 million from the federal government to get the job done and another $200 million in bond money from state taxpayers.

But the fixes remain incomplete. Voting equipment has been updated. None of the punch card, chad-producing voting machines that caused such consternation in Florida remain in use in California.

However, a statewide voter registration database that would allow counties to easily and speedily clear deadwood from voting rosters, and to update registrations when voters move, remains undone. California is the only state in the union that has failed to put a final voter database in place.

County registrars say they've been told the new system, dubbed VoteCal, won't be ready before 2015 or 2016. That means not before the state goes through another presidential and gubernatorial election cycle, at minimum.

Justifiably frustrated by the lack of progress and by what many complain is a lack of leadership from Secretary of State Debra Bowen, county registrars sponsored Senate Bill 397 this year to authorize an interim online registration system. The system would allow voters to register or update their existing registrations on-line using signatures already on file with the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The DMV would transfer the signatures to the secretary of state, who would in turn deliver them to the counties, who could enter the information electronically.

Online registration would allow counties to avoid the inevitable paper crush when hundreds of thousands of citizens attempt to register just days or weeks before a presidential primary or general election. Registrars pushed hard to get the new online system in place by Jan. 1, only to run into opposition from Bowen. She initially claimed her office lacked the time and funding to implement it.

After the bill was amended to allow her to use federal funds, she did urge the governor to sign it. But it's still unclear that the online system will be up and running in time for the June primary. Bowen should make that a priority.

She campaigned as a tech-savvy innovator but has failed to significantly update or improve the state's clunky elections system. She blames the state's size and complexity and a cumbersome state government procurement process that requires her office to get clearance from both the Department of General Services and the California Office of Technology before it can take action.

She's right about the obstacles. Nonetheless, after five years in office and tens of millions in state and federal funds expended, the public is weary of excuses. Californians want and deserve a modern election system, one that allows them to do at least what voters in Oregon, Washington and Arizona can do – register online.

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