That might prevent some of the worst problems of last November, when a number of Florida counties were found to have flawed counting and registration systems. In terms of state legislative efforts at electoral reform, Virginia currently leads the pack with nearly 70 bills or amendments submitted. The national total in all statehouses at last count was just under 300. New Mexico's legislators are talking about adopting touch-screen machines for voting to reduce the error rate. Connecticut, California, Colorado, and Arizona are among those looking at voting over the Internet.
Many states plan to improve recount procedures.
Texas and California may prohibit punch-card ballots. One Illinois bill proposes a machine that checks ballots for errors and provides for an immediate revote if the ballot is incorrectly filled out. These groups need to merge their recommendations into something as close to a uniform standard as possible, while taking regional differences into account. They'd be wise to loop in Congress and the Bush administration. Companies introducing innovative voting technologies should be careful not to raise voter expectations too high.