After this presidential election has been decided, our legislators should correct the faults in Florida's voting process and restore the public's confidence in the way we choose our leaders.

When the presidency has finally been decided and the national spokesmen, media and lawyers have all decamped from Tallahassee, the Florida Legislature will be left to confront the reasons why this state's election, unlike 49 others, held the world's attention for so long. It wasn't just that Florida's electoral votes were so critical or that its popular vote was so acutely close, but that so much went wrong throughout the casting, counting and canvassing of the votes.

The reasons had been obvious but ignored until an accident of history put the spotlight to them. They must be corrected before another election. If the Legislature stalls, federal courts will surely step in. Serious civil rights and voting rights issues exist.

The most disturbing evidence is that of the more than 6-million people who went to the polls a month ago, 179,855 -- that's nearly 3 percent -- cast no vote or had no vote counted for president. Where they lived made the major difference.

Some, perhaps many, passed up that race as a way of saying "none of the above," which is how the Bush campaign prefers to see it. But if that reason were significant, the no-vote pattern should have been fairly uniform across the state.

Voters in some counties were many times more likely to go uncounted for president than voters in others. In Leon County, only 181 voters out of some 103,000 marked no choice for president. That was less than 2 out of every 1,000. But nearly 21 out of every 1,000 presidential ballots were blank or spoiled in Pinellas, as were 25 of every 1,000 in Hillsborough, 44 in Miami-Dade, 64 in Palm Beach and 92 in Duval.

Demographic factors and local confusion, such as the Palm Beach "butterfly" ballot, were factors. But the overwhelming difference was this: Pinellas, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Duval counties still vote on punch cards, with all that means for voter confusion and machine undercounts attributable to chads. Leon was the first to adopt the most advanced optical scanner system, where ballots are read and counted at the polls -- and are returned uncounted to a voter who has mistakenly marked two choices for the same office.

The 23 counties that use this system averaged only 8.2 blank or spoiled presidential votes for each 1,000 voters who came to the polls. The 16 counties that scan ballots only after they've been taken to the courthouse (too late to correct a spoiled one) averaged 37.6 per 1,000, almost as poor a ratio as in the 26 punch-card counties, which averaged 39.2 voters out of every 1,000 who didn't vote in the presidential race, or weren't counted, or spoiled their ballots by marking two or more candidates.

History may have turned on those counties. The New York Times calculated last week that 64 percent of Florida's black voters -- the Gore-Lieberman ticket's strongest constituency -- live in the punch-card counties. So did their strongest reservoirs of white and Hispanic support. Though Bush-Cheney votes were plainly undercounted, too, Gore-Lieberman inevitably lost more. The Democratic ticket got 63 percent of its statewide vote in those counties. But as it carried them by only 51 percent, there were no votes it could afford to lose. With Florida hanging by 537 votes, it was not unreasonable for Gore to seek hand recounts.

It wasn't by happenstance that all the urban counties except Orange still use punch cards. They're cheap. In Hillsborough County, for example, Elections Supervisor Pam Iorio says it could cost up to $10-million to replace the punch card system with something modern and reliable. That can be avoided no longer.

Despite the partisan battle lines over a special session, legislators of both parties say they recognize the faults in the Florida process and are prepared to correct them. They should consider all modern voting technology, including touch-screen computer voting, which Florida law presently does not allow.

Florida also needs:

Standardized ballots. It is absurd that a candidate for America's supreme office is presented to voters so many different ways. The ballots should be uniform and approved not only by the elections supervisor of each county but by the Florida Elections Commission. This does not involve rocket science, erode states' rights or pose new avenues for legal maneuvering. Uniform ballots would give states and counties plenty of room to accommodate local races and ballot initiatives. They also would speed and improve the accuracy of any recount.

Improved poll-worker training. Anecdotes of human error and irregularities were widespread, including such serious instances as voters who knew they had mismarked their ballots being refused their legal right to fresh ones.

More resources for career elections supervisors, including more professional training, greater tax resources for staff, better procedures for keeping current voter lists and reliable procedures to see that "motor voters" are actually registered.

Reliable and tighter reins on the solicitation by political parties for absentee ballots.

Fixing the ambiguities in the laws governing recounts and canvassing that forced the state Supreme Court to act.

Serious consideration of replacing the October runoff primaries with an instant runoff in September, so that overseas absentee ballots could be due on voting day in November instead of 10 days later. The instant runoff, which asks the voter to mark second choices, lends itself well to optical scanning or touch-screen voting. A special, swift procedure in law for post-canvass challenges in presidential races, perhaps by immediate transfer to the Supreme Court once a local judge determines that a complaint isn't frivolous.

The ultimate cost of this disputed election is that the next president will lack as much moral authority as good governance demands. But at least support is growing in the Legislature and in Congress for state and federal governments to provide financial help for new voting machines. Gov. Jeb Bush's proposed bipartisan task force is a way to fashion standards for ballots and counting that could help restore public confidence in our election process. If this mess proves anything, neither party is served by a voting system that undermines voter confidence and leaves the people's will to the speculation of the courts and the mischief of party hacks.

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