Democracy relies on competition -- candidates vying with their ideas to win elections. For Florida's 67 counties to now have only one large certified company to select for election equipment or upgrades is a dangerous irony.

Florida's Department of State, which certifies election equipment and oversees statewide election results, should move quickly to broaden the competition. Otherwise, Election Systems & Software's $5 million acquisition of Diebold Inc.'s voting-machine company amounts to a near monopoly.

At least in the short run, having only ES&S machines won't have much of an impact on Florida's large urban counties. With the exception of Palm Beach, Hillsborough and Indian River counties, which use Sequoia equipment, all the big counties use ES&S machines. County staffs operate and program the equipment and do their own ballot design, meaning they're not dependent on ES&S to make an election run smoothly and fairly.

Some smaller counties like Monroe that use Diebold machines, however, are holding their breath, waiting to see the details. Some are concerned that they may be forced to buy ES&S equipment down the road, requiring changes that could be expensive.

But it's the long run that is of greater concern to all 67 counties and should be to the Florida Department of State. With mostly ES&S and Diebold equipment in use the company will essentially have a monopoly, and that is making a lot of elections officials and fair-voting advocates uneasy.

The supervisors say they want to make sure the state encourages competition so they have the leverage to keep costs down and make reasonable demands of ES&S on improvements. It will be up to Florida's Secretary of State Kurt S. Browning to ensure competition.

Florida has come a long way in its voting technology since the 2000 presidential election's hanging chad debacle. The journey has not been without potholes and detours, however.

The state learned the hard way that touch-screen voting did not reassure voters that their ballots were being counted because the machines left no independently verifiable paper trail. Now we have scanners for paper ballots that guarantee the vote count will be accurate no matter who's counting.

But there's still the matter of under and over voting. The state and election supervisors have been working with the manufacturers to develop software enhancements that tell voters at least twice during the process if they make a mistake, such as voting for more than one candidate in a race.

This is why competition is necessary. Given that voting is a human endeavor there may always be problems that challenge the process. Elections supervisors have to be able to tell ES&S that, if the competition has something better to offer, they expect the same from it, at a reasonable price, or else they'll go elsewhere.

For this to happen the State Department will have to make sure other voting-machine manufacturers understand that, even though Florida's likely not to be in the market for major purchases any time soon, its elections officials still want to have access to their products for future upgrades.

The 2000 election fiasco raised Floridians' expectations for transparency and accuracy in the voting process. Voters in Florida today have no tolerance for mistake-riddled balloting. Election officials can reassure voters by fostering healthy competition among the makers of voting equipment to ensure that every machine works, is tamper proof and will enable every vote to be counted.

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