ILLINOIS HAD WORSE BALLOT WOES THAN FLORIDA

The way last year's presidential election played out in Florida taught us more than we ever wanted to know about ballots.

We learned about pregnant chads. Dimpled chads. Hanging chads.

And the nation held its breath for more than a month, waiting for all those ballots to be sorted out and for Florida to tell us who our president was.

After heated court battles and recounts, George W. Bush emerged the winner. A very thorough recount conducted later by newspapers reaffirmed the earlier decision. Life went on.

And Florida, particularly Palm Beach County, where the now-famous butterfly ballots apparently baffled thousands of voters, continues to be the butt of election jokes around the world.

Now we find out that the teasing shouldn't be exclusive to Florida. Instead, it could be better directed at Illinois.

The Land of Lincoln threw out more presidential election ballots than any other in the Union, a Chicago Tribune analysis has revealed. Illinois election officials threw out 190,000 ballots, or 3.9 percent of the total cast. By comparison, Florida threw out 2.9 percent, New York 2 percent, California 1.6 percent and Texas 1 percent.

Most of the confusion in Illinois was in Chicago and Cook County, where 65 percent of the discarded punch-card votes were cast. Interestingly, election officials there had spent $25 million on equipment upgrades.

City and county officials blamed the number of discarded ballots on a high turnout rate of inexperienced voters. The Tribune's research showed that wasn't the case. The areas with the most ballot problems also had the most experienced voters participating.

About 46,000 city and county voters clearly meant to vote for a presidential candidate but only left dimpled or hanging chads.

The most likely problem was pinpointed by an Ohio State University professor. He said a crowded ballot meant misalignments. It simply wasn't friendly to voters, inexperienced or otherwise. There were 456 potential choices, making it the most crowded ballot in the nation.

The professor's rationale makes a lot of sense. Clearly, every state wants to enable voters to choose the candidates they want without complication.

Chicago and Cook County officials say they'll hire testers to check the equipment and suggest modifications.

Good idea. Even though the discarded votes didn't change the outcome in Illinois -- Gore took the state by a landslide -- state officials shouldn't ignore the problem just because they didn't receive the international attention Florida's leaders did.