Elections in Florida are making news again. And it isn’t much better than it was during 2000.

Most of the electronic voting records from touch-screen machines used for the 2002 gubernatorial primary in Miami-Dade County are gone. Lost. Erased. Vanished.

Want to check the totals? You can’t. Want to make sure the results are right? Nope. Want to see if the machines worked correctly? Too bad.

After the collective national nightmare of hanging chads, Florida jumped headlong into the use of electronic voting machines. In Miami-Dade and Broward counties, the state spent more than $40 million to update its equipment.

The investment hasn’t paid off.

There were technical problems on Election Day in 2002 and an unusual number of votes were “lost.” And now, much of the information is unavailable for review. A computer crash blanked the audit trail.

It’s a disturbing development, indeed. The last thing the country needs is another election left in doubt because of faulty voting technology.

Electronic voting machines won’t arrive in Maine until 2006, as required by the Help America Vote Act of 2002. The law, which has good intentions, wants to capitalize on new technologies to make it easier for people with disabilities to vote by themselves and in secret.

Many of the electronic voting machines now available have major problems. They don’t create a verifiable voting record for use during a recount, and computer specialists have shown that security is lax, putting the integrity of the system at risk.

Rightly, Maine has created a working group to examine available voting machines and report to the Legislature in January. The group includes technical and voting experts, and representatives for people with disabilities. Maine doesn’t plan to buy any machines until 2005.

On incorporating new technology into polling places, the state is correct to take a measured approach. The working group should demand that all electronic voting machines create a paper audit trail and have had their security thoroughly tested.

Otherwise, state voters could find themselves facing a Floridian predicament: An election called into question with no way to check the results.

More pork

Disgusting. It’s just absolutely disgusting.

As we’ve written before, the House and Senate have created a massive, pork-laden piece of tax legislation ostensibly to fix a trade dispute with Europe. But the legislation goes much further than just fixing the trade issue.

The bill, which has been passed by both houses and rests in conference committee, recklessly sells out the U.S. Treasury with goodies to a host of special interests. We’ve fumed before about the tax breaks for Oldsmobile dealers and tackle box makers. But a new outrage jumps to the top of the list.

According to the New York Times, a single sentence in the 960-page bill could create a $2 billion windfall for the owners of professional sports teams by allowing them to write off more radio and TV contracts and the full value of franchises. That could increase the value of some teams by 5 percent or more.

These guys are the rich of the rich. Somehow, they rate relief while popular tax cuts on the middle class are held hostage by Republican political strategies.

What started out as a simple fix to a trade dispute has ballooned into a monster. Congress has little appetite for fiscal discipline, but this bill must be stopped.