Gotham Gazette  The Place for New York Policy and politics
Citizens Union   A Broken System Stays Broken  by Jillian
Matundan, Aug 05, 2004  Few have completely forgotten the
debacle in Florida during the presidential election of 2000,
where thousands of voters were disenfranchised because their
ballot was so confusing that they chose the wrong candidate (the
so-called "butterfly ballots"), or because the ballots were so
poorly designed that it wasn't clear who the voter had voted for
(the "hanging chads"), or because they were simply deleted from
the voting rolls. Manual recounts took months, and then it was
the Supreme Court who decided the presidency.  The nation was
shocked, outraged, embarrassed. The federal government vowed to
do something about it.  Little has changed in New York.  When,
in response to Florida, Congress passed the Help America Vote
Act (commonly referred to as HAVA), the plan was to provide
state and local governments with millions of dollars to upgrade
their voting systems. What this