What Florida has learned lately about punch-card voting was common knowledge among experts long before November 2000. What wasn't so well known, but is also clear now, is that optically scanned ballots, though a superior technology, can be even more unreliable if voters aren't alerted to correct mistakes. That leaves 41 counties, including Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas, needing new equipment that must be budgeted within a few months if it is to be available for November 2002. It would make good sense to lease the new equipment, as the governor's elections task force is tentatively recommending, rather than to buy in haste what might soon turn out to be overpriced and obsolete.

But it's possible to be too cautious. The task force needs to guard against that when it holds what may be its final meeting today in Jacksonville.

The commission's proposal is to lease precinct-based optical scanning equipment for the 2002 and possibly the 2004 elections, while the division of elections looks into a uniform computerized touch-screen voting system for later years. Meanwhile, the division would decertify punch cards, prohibiting their use.

The recommendation is too rigid, however, in appearing to disallow touch-screen voting for the 2002 election cycle and in assuming uniform statewide technology rather than uniform statewide standards as the ultimate goal. Moreover, it gives the elections division another reason to drag its feet in certifying any of the touch-screen systems that have already been used in California, Texas, Michigan and North Carolina.

It's true that there are lingering doubts over computerized voting, mainly because it is so new, but no one has given a good reason for denying the manufacturers a fair and early opportunity to satisfy the skeptics. No other system is as adaptable to voters with vision or hearing impairment or to allowing people to vote at the most convenient polling station, whether it's near home or work.

The Legislature is already looking for excuses to spend as little as possible this year and to shirk any long-term financial commitment to voting technology. So the task force needs to be as bold as prudence permits if the lessons of November 2000 are not to be lost.

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