An IS failure

Florida turning away from touch-screen voting

Gov. Charlie Crist announced plans Thursday to abandon the touch-screen voting machines that many of Florida's largest counties installed after the disputed 2000 presidential election. The state will instead adopt a system of casting paper ballots counted by scanning machines in time for the 2008 presidential election.

Voting experts said Florida's move, coupled with new federal voting legislation expected this year, could be the death knell for the paperless electronic machines. If, as expected, the Florida Legislature approves the $32.5 million cost of the change, it would be the nation's biggest repudiation yet of touch-screen voting, which was widely embraced after the 2000 recount as a state-of-the-art means of restoring confidence that every vote would count.