Election 2000: What Went Wrong and What's Being Done About it
             The United States is the backbone of the technology age. We are responsible for the first use of weapons of mass destruction. We are the world's greatest economic powerhouse. All this, and yet we were counting presidential ballots by hand. Bush was sure he had won the presidential election. He knew he had captivated a larger audience. No wonder, as Gore, like his father before him, couldn't even collect his home state. Although just as the election ended he found out how close it really was (Duffy 1). Albeit Bush won, he is still "not considered to be the legitimate president in many quarters of the country" ("Electoral" 1). Many of the problems in the presidential election of 2000 were caused by outdated voting machines but elections to come will definitely be different.
             Thousands of votes in Palm Beach didn't register in the punch-card reading machine, according to Michael Duffy (12). This could be due to the approximate 600,000 outdated punch-card and mechanical-lever voting machines across the country (Drinkard 1). Even though old voting contraptions cause problems, Noah Adams (2) reports that a lot of the election confusion was caused by the television networks calling winners in states before the polls even closed.
             Some say that the problem lies in the actual election process. A new proposed bill would elect the president based on the popular vote ("Electoral" 2), although this is one of over 300 proposed bills in 40 states to update voting procedures/equipment (Adams 1). Another possibility would be a national uniform poll closing time that, according to States News Service (3), would eliminate erroneous projections by the media. The measure would set 9 p.m. EST as the nationwide closing time. Jim Drinkard (5) reports that officials in Georgia believe that the problem lies in outdated equipment so they want to ...