Obama Announces Members of Election Commission

After tapping two of the nation’s pre-eminent election lawyers to lead an effort to study the way Americans vote, President Obama on Tuesday announced his intention to appoint eight additional members to a presidential commission designed to improve the electoral process after voters faced long lines and other obstacles in last year’s elections.

“As I said in my State of the Union Address, when any American, no matter where they live or what their party, is denied that right simply because too many obstacles stand in their way, we are betraying our ideals,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “We have an obligation to ensure that all eligible voters have the opportunity to cast their ballots without unwarranted obstructions or unnecessary delay.”

Mr. Obama, who announced in February that Robert F. Bauer, the president’s former lawyer and White House counsel, and Benjamin L. Ginsberg, a Republican lawyer who worked for Mitt Romney, would be co-chairmen of the panel, said on Tuesday that he would round out the panel with representatives from business, public servants and state election officials.

Among those he intends to appoint are Brian Britton, vice president of global park operations and initiatives at Walt Disney World, and Joe Echevarria, chief executive of the accounting firm Deloitte.

The remaining members are expected to be Trey Grayson, a Republican who lost to Senator Rand Paul in the 2010 Kentucky Senate primary and now directs the Institute of Politics at Harvard University; Larry Lomax, the registrar in Clark County, Nev.; Michele Coleman Mayes, the vice president, general counsel and secretary at the New York Public Library; Ann McGeehan, a lawyer for the Texas County and District Retirement System; Tammy Patrick, a federal compliance officer for the elections department in Maricopa County, Ariz.; and Christopher M. Thomas, the elections director in Michigan.

The commission will begin meeting in June and is expected to produce a report six months later. It is tasked with identifying “nonpartisan ways to shorten lines at polling places, promote the efficient conduct of elections and provide better access to the polls for all voters,” the announcement said.

The executive order creating the commission pointed to problems faced by members of the military, overseas voters, voters with disabilities and voters with limited English proficiency and special needs. It listed the training of poll workers, issues with polling centers and voting machines, the management of voter rolls, ballot simplicity and overseas balloting among several suggested areas of study.

Voting rights advocates have welcomed the creation of the panel, spurred by long lines and voting problems in the 2012 elections that experts say disproportionately affected poor and minority voters, who are traditionally Democratic constituencies. But the groups are tempering their expectations until they see whether the panel is effective.

“The Presidential Commission on Election Administration can help get to the bottom of the problems that made it very difficult for some voters to cast their ballot in the last election,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a statement after the president’s announcement. “I urge the members of this nonpartisan panel to apply their impressive experience in running elections and running businesses to determining how to make it easier for every eligible citizen to vote.”

Send Us Your Questions About Drones

On Thursday afternoon, President Obama will give a speech at National Defense University during which he is expected to provide his first detailed justification for the targeted killing program run by the C.I.A. and the Pentagon.

The Obama administration has carried out hundreds of targeted killing operations using armed drones in Pakistan, Yemen and parts of Africa, but the program has remained, for the most part, a secret. It is unclear how much detail Mr. Obama will give about the drone program, but his speech is likely to renew the public debate about the costs, benefits and efficacy of targeted killing operations.

The New York Times’s national security team is taking your questions about drones and their role in the United States’s security strategy. Post your questions in the comments below, or on Twitter using the hashtag #AskNYT.

Then, check back before Mr. Obama’s speech on Thursday for answers to selected readers’ questions from The Times’s Mark Mazzetti, Eric Schmitt and Scott Shane.

White House Says Justice Dept. Should Not Threaten Criminal Action in Leak Cases

The White House said on Tuesday that it did not think the Justice Department should threaten criminal action against journalists who report on sensitive national security matters, distancing itself from a recent case in which a television correspondent was targeted as a possible “co-conspirator” in a leak investigation.

Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said he discussed the situation with President Obama after reports that James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, was described in criminal terms in an affidavit involving a 2009 article about North Korea posted on the network’s Web site.

“I can’t comment on the specifics of any ongoing criminal matter,” Mr. Carney told reporters. “But if you’re asking me whether the president believes that journalists should be prosecuted for doing their jobs, the answer is no.”

The statement was more definitive than the one the White House had issued the day before, when news of Mr. Rosen’s situation was first written about in The Washington Post. Mr. Carney, himself a former reporter for Time magazine, sought to amplify the original response by disavowing the notion of criminalizing journalism without weighing in on the particular case.

Having said that, Mr. Carney asserted that it was still a top priority of government to investigate and prosecute those who leak classified information in violation of the law, saying it was important to balance the need for secrecy with a free press. The Rosen case generated special attention as it came after word that the Justice Department had seized a broad array of phone records from The Associated Press as part of an investigation into a national security leak.

“There is no question that when classified information is leaked, that is a violation of the law,” Mr. Carney said. “And it is a serious matter, as we have seen in some cases.”

He added, “It is also vital to our democracy â€" and the president believes this deeply â€" that the press is allowed to pursue investigative journalism freely.”