The punch-card ballot is under attack after Florida's troubles.
The sticky situation in Florida left voters all over the country wondering who will be President. It also made many wonder about the way we vote-and not just in Florida. Believe it or not, about 2% of all ballots in modern presidential elections can't be counted because of voter errors and other problems.
The Constitution lets each state decide how its citizens vote. Most states leave the choice to cities and counties: about 3,000 separate areas. Result: a crazy quilt of voting methods.
| The punch-card ballot is under attack after Florida's troubles. |
The nation's most popular way to vote is with punch cards, the method that caused so much trouble in Florida. One-third of Americans use them, though problems with the cards and the machines that read them have led two states to ban this method. Lever machines and scanning machines that read pencil marks are also common methods. Some places use handwritten ballots. In New Mexico 500 votes were recorded wrongly because of sloppy handwriting! "We're seeing the consequences of an outdated system," says Cortland Coleman, director of Arizona's Democratic Party.
Will this year's mess finally convince voting districts that there's a better way? Someday we may vote over telephones or the Internet. Touch-screen booths, similar to automated cash machines, are already used in some districts and could catch on elsewhere. But they cost up to $5,000 per machine. Not all communities can spend so much to update their voting methods. Some suggest a cheaper improvement: designing one standard ballot.
This election has already made history for being so close. It may also be remembered as the one that persuaded us to improve the way we vote.