With the presidential election only two months away, another hang-fire vote in Florida seems likely. Voting-machine problems in several swing states could throw the outcome into doubt, but the worst case seems to be Florida, where a chaotic voting system in the 2000 election kept the nation from knowing for weeks who the next president would be.

Many of Florida’s precincts still use paper ballots that are counted by machines but preserved for recount in case of protests. That’s the system in Maine, and it provides substantial protection against error and fraud. But the trouble in Florida is that 15 counties – comprising half the population and including Miami and Fort Lauderdale – have touch-screen voting machines that provide no verifiable paper trail.

The machines have a bad record. News reports on Florida’s 2002 primary election told of computer crashes and machines with “undervoting” rates as high as 8 percent. That means 8 percent of the votes never showed up in the final tally.

Fortunately, the American Civil Liberties Union and the People for the American Way Foundation are on the case. They have filed a legal challenge against Gov. Jeb Bush’s administration’s rule that electronic voting machine tallies be excluded from any recounts.

The Florida Republican Party has advised voters to request and vote with paper absentee ballots because the machines could not verify votes in a recount. A test comes Tuesday during this year’s Florida primary.

After the 2000 Florida election debacle, the People for the American Way Foundation established a nonpartisan Election Protection program, to provide free legal advice and assistance to voters. It has been active in every election since then and is preparing its greatest effort for the 2004 elections. Working with dozens of civil rights organizations, Election Protection will deploy thousands of volunteer lawyers, law students, poll monitors and other volunteers in 30 states to assist voters at every step from registration to casting a ballot.

The new voting machines are mostly manufactured by three companies, Diebold, Election Systems and Software, and Sequoia. They seem to be closely related and tend to be secretive in their operations, and resist demands for a verifiable paper trail. They claim that their machines are federally certified for accuracy and reliability, but the certification is by for-profit corporations that are paid by the manufacturers. Diebold also makes ATM machines, and critics question why a voting machine should not provide a verifiable paper record just like any ATM.

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution asked one of the testing companies, the California-based Wyle Laboratories, about its relationship with manufacturers. The reply was “Our work on election machines is off-limits. … We just don’t discuss it.” The newspaper commented: “That’s a kindly way of saying it’s none of your business. It is, of course, and would also be the first order of business for the Federal Election Commission.” But the commission years ago delegated the task of selecting independent testing firms to the National Association of State Election Directors, some of whose members are beholden to the voting-machine companies. Talk about the fox guarding the chicken coop.

Why is it that a country that considers itself the world’s greatest democracy is so careless in the way it manages one of its primary functions, the right to a fair and independent vote?