He also asked the State Board of Elections to test modern voting machinery and establish a statewide standard for counting punch-card and paper ballots.

Where votes are recorded through electronic or mechanical means, the voting machinery may be altered so that a vote intended for one candidate is recorded for another.

The recommendations would be backed by $100 million in grants to help states, cities and towns buy new voting machinery.

With so many close races and control of Congress up for grabs, Tuesday was a test of the nation's largest overhaul of its antiquated voting machinery.

But the original ruling put a torch to a debate smoldering for years about whether voters - particularly poor and minority voters - are denied the right to vote by faulty and outdated voting machinery.

Still another approach to this philosophy of voting protest centers about the control of the physical and technical voting machinery:

The state elections director, Ed Kast, has resigned from his job overseeing the voting machinery.

Voters - the owners, or principals - don't choose the voting machinery.

A ballot that doesn't vary from state to state, and a well-oiled uniform voting machinery, should be prerequisites for a democratic country going to the polls.

It was a paradox, some Gore aides said, that their high-tech campaign was ultimately done in by Florida's antiquated voting machinery.