More home cooking in Florida

Florida, where George Bush either won or quite arguably stole the presidency four years ago, is expected to be a battleground state again this year; its 27 electoral votes may be the key to a closely contested election. The president continues to enjoy home field advantage: His brother, Jeb Bush, is still the governor and gets to appoint the secretary of state, Glenda E. Hood, who will count the votes. Recent events in Florida are cause for grave concern that integrity of the vote count may again be an issue.

The touch screen voting machines, touted as the cure for the butterfly ballots and punch cards that caused such problems last time, have been prone to a software flaw that led to errors in post-election audits. Officials say the flaw has since been fixed with a software patch. A new state rule excludes the machines, which have been installed in 15 of the states most populous counties, especially in the urban south, from post-election manual recounts. The Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition requested an independent review of the touch-screen machines, but the secretary of state's office said it was an effort to undermine voter confidence. The director of elections, Ed Kast, resigned last month "to pursue other interests." A Democratic congressman, Robert Wexler, has sued to ban the electronic machines unless they leave a paper trail.

The new election law passed after the 2000 debacle contained a little noticed provision that kept all voter registration records secret. When a judge struck it down earlier this month, an examination revealed that only 61 of the 48,000 convicted felons removed from the voter rolls since 2000 were Hispanic, the rest were mostly black. In the 2000 election thousands of people, most of them black, were improperly denied the vote because they mistakenly appeared on a list of ex-felons. Hispanics tend to vote Republican, black people tend to vote for Democrats. After defending the list's integrity for weeks against newspaper investigations that revealed its bias, state officials finally ped it. "I can tell you with the utmost certainty that it was unintentional and unforeseen," said a spokeswoman.

But critics were quick to point out that the state's action fit a pattern. "As far as I'm concerned, there is no more trust," said Miami Herald columnist Jim DeFede. "Glenda Hood must resign. She is either amazingly incompetent or the leader of a frightening conspiracy . . . Next, the governor should remove himself from matters affecting elections and an agency such as the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights should step in and assume direct oversight of the state's election system."

Mr. DeFede's plan is a good one. The nation can ill-afford another Florida debacle, and if what it takes is to have its elections supervised like it's some banana republic, it's a small price to pay to ensure the integrity of the most important election of our time. America has had quite enough Florida home cooking from the Bush family.