States used 28 ballot formats

Ballots

Butterfly or straight line? Punch card or vote by internet? One sure outcome of the US presidential election fiasco is a lot of hard questioning about how the country votes and how the system can be improved.

Butterfly or straight line? Punch card or vote by internet? One sure outcome of the US presidential election fiasco is a lot of hard questioning about how the country votes and how the system can be improved.

Because of the high degree of local autonomy in US politics, no fewer than 28 different ballot formats were in operation around the country for last Tuesday's presidential race. That makes any standardised criteria for determining close races impossible to establish.

The butterfly ballot, where candidates' names appear on either side of a central divide and the boxes, or punch holes, appear down the middle, may have caused untold controversy in Palm Beach County, Florida, but it seemed to work fine in a slightly different format in Cook County, Illinois - the area covering downtown Chicago.

Already over the weekend, several media commentators and political leaders were calling for a standard countrywide presidential ballot, with identical criteria for interpreting disputed results. Their calls are almost certain to fall on deaf ears, however, since so many states have their own strong ideas on how to improve matters.

Oregon voted this time entirely by mail - a slow but possibly more reliable method (final tallies are still not in there). In many states, meanwhile, there are clamours to move elections on to the internet, a proposal that cannot be universal simply because too many people have no access to computers.