The chief worry is the punch-card machinery that produces Florida's famous array of chads. The chads confuse the counting equipment, producing undervotes at a much higher rate than ballots marked with pens that are counted by optical scanners. But the switch from punching to scanning is expensive, so a third of the nation's voters still use the old technology. According to a Post analysis of Florida's Miami-Dade County, precincts where fewer than 30 percent of the voters are black had about 3 percent of ballots that failed to register a vote for president. In precincts where more than 70 percent of the voters are black, the undervote was nearly 10 percent.
Some states show signs of acting on their own initiative.
Maryland has announced plans to standardize its voting systems, which would mean replacing Montgomery County's punch cards and Prince George's County's antiquated tab machines. Connecticut is considering a switch to electronic voting booths modeled on the automatic tellers banks use. The debate should not lose sight of a distressing lesson of this confused election. The political system, already biased in favor of the monied lobbies that pay for campaigns, now seems further tarnished by electoral machinery that counts affluent voters more carefully than poor ones. News Jobs AP Shopping Archives Entertain.