Florida may be headed for another electoral crisis, but few of the state's elections officials seem to be willing to cope with it.

Those new touch-screen voting machines that are being used in 15 counties don't leave a paper trail, and Secretary of State Glenda Hood says that's just fine. But Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, filed a lawsuit demanding that the touch-screen machines be equipped with printers. The fate of Florida's Electoral College votes - a sizeable and important variable in determining the winner of the presidential election - hangs tenuously in the balance.

If Wexler's lawsuit is successful and the courts demand a paper trail, many supervisors of elections might get a nasty surprise: Their jobs will include some mind-numbing changes with just months to prepare for Election 2004. If history is any guide, these changes will result in confusion, fraud and the politics of personal destruction.

Back in 1916, Florida's second primary was abolished in favor of a new kind of ballot that allowed voters to pick a first-choice and a second-choice candidate. The cost of the second primary was eliminated, but each county had a different standard for deciding how to count the second-choice ballots. Some counties didn't count them at all. The results were challenged in court, and massive fraud was uncovered by supporters of both major candidates. A lengthy legal battle ensued, and historians continue to debate who really won.

The spectre of Election 1916 hung in the air during the 2000 recount, as both sides hurled accusations and counter accusations. But the politics of recount in 2000 - like the politics of recount in 1916 - were so partisan that the issues of democracy were obscured. Even now - long after the issue has been resolved and George W. Bush has assumed office - the difference between Republicans and Democrats is astounding.

Hood seems to have forgotten the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bush v. Gore. That decision, which created a dangerous precedent for federal intervention in state voting procedures, proclaimed Florida's recount process was unconstitutional because varying standards for recounting ballots in each county violated constitutional guarantees that each voters be treated equally. If some voters leave a paper trail and other voters don't, how can all Florida voters be guaranteed that their ballots will be counted according to a uniform standard in the event of a recount? They can't. That's one reason that Democrats like Wexler have been pushing for the printers.

Another reason is the fickle nature of technology. Anyone who has spent any time with a computer knows that computers are fallible. They crash; they are susceptible to tampering. Yet Hood seems willing to invest the ultimate faith in their certitude. The official line is that these machines are so carefully tested, nothing can go wrong.

Perhaps when the computers crash, Hood won't be the person who must revive them. Maybe the secretary has never been hacked. If she had, she would know why computer voting must have a paper trail. Blind faith in the inerrancy of technology is dangerously naive.

Back in January, the margin in an election in Palm Beach and Broward counties was only 12 votes. But the machines recorded more than 130 blank ballots. Seeing as how there was only one race on the ballot, the potential that 130 voters showed up on Election Day to cast a nonvote is unfathomable. So the runner-up demanded a recount. But the machines did not produce a paper record of the voting, so there was nothing to recount.

During the recent presidential preference primary in Bay County, results showed that with more than 60 percent of precincts reporting, Richard Gephardt was beating John Kerry by two to one. Gephardt had long since pulled out of the race, so it was obvious that the computers had malfunctioned. Yet Hood continues to shut her eyes to the paper-trail problem and tell us that nothing is wrong.

Last week, Sen. Anna Cowin proposed a plan that proclaimed "a manual recount may not be conducted of undervotes on touch-screen machines," essentially codifying Hood's dangerous belief in touch-screen inerrancy. After seeing a demonstration of the paper-free machines, Cowin was left with "no doubt whatsoever" that the machines will work properly and that printouts will not be necessary.

This is unacceptable, and Wexler's championing of a paper trail is admirable. It's hard to see how Florida's recount procedure could have a uniform standard without a paper record of votes, so it's likely that the court will order a paper trail in the touch-screen counties. Like the second-choice ballots of 1916 and the dangling chads of 2000, this crisis has the potential to create a free-fire zone of raw politics in Florida.

It's fun to watch, but it makes our state look silly. Hood and Cowin should admit that they were wrong about the paper ballots and work to remedy the standardization problem while there is still time to ensure a uniform standard for a recount. Supervisors of elections must plan for the changes ahead, and Florida voters must be willing to challenge their state elections officials to ensure that every vote is counted in 2004.