Once again, many of us will stay up way past our bedtimes to watch the results of what the pundits have called "the most significant election in our lifetime." And once again there are controversies over the technology we use to collect and count the vote. I propose we make our voting technology at least as safe, secure and reliable as our gambling technology.

If we were an intelligent people, we would have learned from the Florida fiasco in 2000 that vote counting is a serious business, and needs to be made reliable and trustworthy. Instead, vested interests saw a new generation of voting machines as a way to make a profit, reward their friends and keep themselves in power. A small number of companies make voting machines in this country, and those companies' executives are frequently involved in politics. One company's CEO famously was the state chairman of a presidential candidate's state committee, and made a speech guaranteeing that candidate would carry the state that used machines his company made.