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the imbroglio in Florida, it's safe to say that voting in America is fraught with problems. Many people find election ballots hard to understand. It's easy to mark them incorrectly and to miscount them.
Perhaps this ongoing mess could be averted with the help of modern technology. Or perhaps not.
We'll find out. Lots of companies are working on high-tech voting systems that speed and simplify the election process while preserving the sanctity of the ballot. Voters in some parts of Texas used an electronic notepad that instantly relays results to a central computer. And in Arizona earlier this year, the Democratic primary was conducted via the Internet.
But some experts warn that while it may be possible to make voting easier and more reliable, no technology, however advanced, can ensure a perfect result. "It's like asking me how do you design a secure computer system," said Bruce Schneier, president of computer security firm Counterpane Systems. "You can't. You just do the best you can."
There's already plenty of technology at work in the election process. Just look at the disputed ballot in Palm Beach County, Fla. The system employed a punch-card ballot, which is used in about a third of the United States. Voters are supposed to punch holes in paper ballots, which can then be read by a machine for quick tabulation.
But many voters punch more than one hole on the presidential portion of the ballot, nullifying their votes. Others now claim that they were confused by the layout of the ballot, causing them to accidentally vote for the wrong candidate, And sometimes, the cards aren't punched all the way through. A scrap of leftover paper prevents them from being scanned correctly by the vote-counting machine.
One possible solution: Get rid of the paper ballot altogether. That's the goal of Hart InterCivic Inc., in Austin, Texas.
Several counties in Texas and Colorado used Hart's eSlate voting device in the recent election. ''We knew that the timing was right for this product, regardless of the activity in Florida,'' said Jerry Meadows, senior vice president of the election solutions group.
In the eSlate system, voters are assigned a personal identification number similar to those used with ATMs. This is to ensure that each person can only vote once.
Then the voter goes to a booth and picks up an eSlate, which resembles an oversized palmtop computer. By rotating a dial on the device, the voter can highlight and enter the PIN. Then the ballot appears on the screen. Again, rotating the dial highlights a name on the electronic ballot. When the desired candidate appears, the voter presses an ''enter'' button. The chosen candidate's name is clearly marked on the screen to avoid confusion.
The voter can even scroll back to review choices or change his mind. Once the red ''cast ballot'' button is pushed, the vote is recorded.
Meadows said that eSlate's all-electronic approach reduces the likelihood of voter errors. With paper ballots, ''you can over-vote, that is, you can cast a ballot for more than one candidate,'' he said. ''Electronically, you can preclude that from occurring.''
But wouldn't the same senior citizens who were confused by the Palm Beach ballot have trouble with a voting computer? Apparently not. ''The responses we got back were that it was very user-friendly, easy to use,'' he says.
With the eSlate, vote data is recorded in a computer at the polling place then relayed to the board of elections. But some firms want to send votes directly over the Internet.
Earlier this year, Election.com of Garden City, N.Y., worked with the Arizona Democratic Party to hold the party's primary election over the Internet. It was the first real Internet-based election in the world, with voters logging on from their homes or offices, or 90 public polling places around the state.
Mark Fleisher, chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party, said use of the Internet boosted voter participation by 600 percent. And Fleisher is convinced that Internet voting is actually safer. ''The security we were using was 10 times better than what we used in a regular election,'' he said.
For instance, people could often go to a traditional polling place without providing proof of their identity. To vote on the Internet, they had to use a personal identification number sent to them by mail or register to vote at the polling station.
As for the threat that computer vandals could disrupt the process, Fleisher wasn't worried. ''We were there four days and they didn't get in. There were hackers all over the world that were trying to break in.''
Perhaps. But that's not good enough for Hans von Spakovsky. He's on the national advisory board of the Voting Integrity Project and on the board of elections in Fulton County, Ga.
''The security problems right now cannot be solved,'' said von Spakovsky. For example, what if someone created a Trojan Horse program like those used to disrupt major Web sites early this year? But this Trojan would be designed to prevent its victims from voting over the Internet, or maybe even make them vote for the wrong candidate.
''The security that most people have on their home computers is minimal to nonexistent,'' said von Spakovsky, making home machines far less secure than those at a polling place.
Even then, the Internet votes must be sent to a central server computer. Considering that major corporations like Microsoft Corp. have had their most secure computers raided by computer vandals, it's conceivable that the voting computers might be sabotaged.
''Can you imagine what would happen if the state computer that's supposed to be receiving votes goes down?'' mused von Spakovsky.
Even Mark Strama, vice president of Election.com, isn't completely satisfied with the present state of affairs. ''In general, I think that the security challenges for Internet voting are serious, but we are overcoming them,'' Strama said. But for now, he thinks Internet voting should be limited to minor local contests, rather than contests for higher office.
For Jonathan Zittrain, assistant professor at Harvard Law School, there's another serious problem with Internet voting - ignorance. ''I think with a lot of political issues, the most political discourse a lot of people receive is on their way to the voting place,'' he said.
Zittrain thinks that many voters make up their minds based on the signs and handbills they see on their way to the polls. ''If we move to a system in which people can vote from the privacy of their home, you may really lose that opportunity to interact.''
As part of an Internet voting system, Zittrain would want the election Web site to contain information about the candidates and issues at stake. Voters would have to read a basic summary before being led to the screen where they'd cast their votes.
As for the problem of network security, Zittrain thinks one safeguard might be the use of standard Internet voting software. The software should be ''open-source,'' like the popular Linux operating system. This means that the code would be publicly available. Computer vandals would study it to find its security weaknesses, but so would hobbyists and security experts worldwide. This way, the weaknesses would soon become public knowledge, ensuring that government agencies could fix them in time for the next election.
Even so, Zittrain admits no voting security system is every completely unbeatable. ''You don't have to shoot for perfection, necessarily,'' he said. ''We just want to shoot for something better than what we have.''
