Task force to reform Florida ballot

A special task force set up to reform the heavily-criticised electoral system in Florida is due to hold its first meeting today.

Florida's governor Jeb Bush -- the brother of President-elect George W.

Bush -- has given the team two months to come up with an alternative to the discredited punch-card voting system.

That method, dating from the nineteen-fifties, proved up to five per cent inaccurate in the United States presidential election in November, and gave the English language a new word -- "chad" -- to describe the tiny squares of paper left hanging from improperly punched ballots. A separate investigation will be conducted later this week by the US civil rights commission into why so many African-American voters were disenfranchised by election officials who said they couldn't verify the voters' identity.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service