After the Florida voting debacle tied the 2000 presidential election into knots, Congress passed a law to help states get their elections in order.

As part of that law, Maine received $17 million in federal money to upgrade the state’s voter registration system, with a deadline of Jan. 1, 2006, for compliance.

The Bangor Daily News reported this week that the state missed that deadline, has fired the contractor working on it and is trying to salvage what work has been done by sticking with a subcontractor that will take over the project.

It seems that Maine has a difficult time with computers.

The state has struggled to implement technology before. Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services badly bungled a new $22 million computer system that handles MaineCare billing. The chaos stretched out for months as service providers struggled to get paid. Then some got paid too much or the wrong amounts, and the state had to go looking for money that was misdirected.

Like the MaineCare troubles, the voter registration upgrades are a massive undertaking. There are 503 towns that maintain their own voter lists. The goal of the system upgrade was to centralize those voter lists to make it more difficult for someone to register to vote in two places at the same time.

Local town and city offices have already received the hardware necessary for the upgrade, including new computers and printers, but the system isn’t operational and won’t be before the June primary.

Secretary of State Matt Dunlap is correct that the state should place its emphasis on making sure town clerks know what to do in June – and November, for that matter.

What’s clear is that the state needs to improve its expertise in project management, especially as it relates to new technology. Two big tech blunders so close together tell us that potential state contractors aren’t thoroughly scrutinized before contracts are signed or there’s not appropriate oversight to make sure the job is getting done right once it has begun.