Hanging Chads Plus 8, Voting Mishaps Continue

Oct. 31, 2008— -- Retired bank president Christine Jennings of Sarasota, Fla., is optimistic about her chances in the 13th District congressional race.

An early voting poll shows her ahead, but she is worried about those electronic voting machines that a third of the country is using this year.

"There are too, too many things that can go wrong with them," she told "20/20."

She's skeptical because two years ago, Jennings ran for and lost the same congressional seat. She got the most votes, but the machines in her hometown recorded thousands of ballots that registered no vote on election night.

She lost by a razor-thin margin.

"We were horrified," Jennings said, "because it was so obvious that something was wrong."

In the uproar that followed, Florida moved away from those machines.

"It was an experience that I hope to never repeat and I hope no other candidate ever goes through it," she said.

After every recent election cycle, stories about electronic voting machine problems abound. This year is no exception.

In West Virginia, early voters say their votes for Barack Obama were flipped to John McCain.

The Mess That HAVA Created

The Rev. DeForest Soaries was the first chairman of the Election Assistance Commission, an agency created after Florida's 2000 hanging chad fiasco.

"It's the fault of a system run by, essentially, the federal government, which has failed to invest properly in democracy," he said.

The mess in Florida led to a lot of plans, laws and agencies meant to prevent reoccurrences. In addition to the EAC, the federal government passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to replace punch-card voting systems and create uniform administration standards.