During the infamous 2000 general election, Florida — in particular Palm Beach County — took the national spotlight, and phrases like “voter irregularities” and “hanging chads” became part of the American lexicon. After Florida election committees and voting citizens alike were embarrassed (and rightfully so) for their alarming incompetence and ineptitude, the state government quickly outlawed those ballots.

Faced with the need to overhaul their voting systems, many Florida counties, including the one where I live, invested millions of dollars in electronic touch-screen voting machines. We used these high-tech devices during several elections. Personally, I thought they were great. You cast your vote, then you’re shown a summary screen that shows you who you voted for, so that you can visually confirm that the machine recorded your intentions accurately. When you’re done, you push the big, red, blinking “VOTE” button and walk away.

But Florida had not escaped its own self-made election hell. Instead, it had merely descended one more circle into the deepening inferno. In Sarasota county, fresh “voter irregularities” were discovered with the touch-screen hardware. The county’s touch-screen devices apparently malfunctioned in such a way that they did not register many touches on the screen. In a congressional race, it was determined that 17,000 voters mysteriously had not chosen either candidate — and the winner of the race captured the title with a 368-vote margin. This set off a bunch of alarm bells. Clearly, a lot of voters simply did not pay attention to the review screens — which correctly indicated that no vote had been cast — proving that if you try to make something idiot-proof, nature will simply design a better idiot. But that is no excuse for the abysmal failure of the county’s hardware, which has but one function — one that that it failed to carry out properly.

After the Sarasota incident, members of the Florida state government once again became concerned that their names would be illuminated in the national hall of shame if they didn’t get things under control. So another statewide decree was laid down, banning the use of touch-screen voting machines. So far, Florida’s record was 0-for-2.

Then came the ballot scanning machines.

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