Election supervisors say that the midwinter conference is usually a sleeper, but this year the discussions and round tables have been jam-packed with ideas for how to fix Florida's election problem.

Although she was nearly half an hour late and surrounded by a mob of cameras, Secretary of State Katherine Harris was treated to a standing ovation.

At times Harris seemed to be speaking more to the press than to the election supervisors. She flatly debunked rumors of a job with President Bush, but then insisted to the supervisors that she is sticking with election reform.

"But I want you to know that I will work very closely with the governor's elections commission and I will ask for additional supplemental funding and matching grants for your counties," Harris said.

Harris said that one of the toughest challenges is to rescue the reputation of the state.

"What we have to work on is the perception of our election system," Harris said.

But she continued to insist that it was the voters, not the punch cards that bungled the election.

"The issues were not with our system. The issue was the closeness of the election and when someone doesn't follow the instructions or remove the chads, that became an issue," Harris said.

But the sales people hawking the latest technology could read the future and invited election officials to go shopping for a new way to vote. Setting up wherever there was a crowd, vendors demonstrated the modern cousin to the chad.

The stakes for the voting equipment vendors is suddenly breathtakingly high. If, for example, the folks behind the bubble ballot could get a client as big as Duval County, the rest of state could possibly follow. Both the bubble ballot, where people ink in their choices, and the touch screen voting machines are popular contenders to replace the voteamatic machines.

Recounting all the votes last year cost taxpayers a chunk of change. The entire state of Florida spent $3 million retallying and reexamining ballots. Duval County spent $70,000 and $42,000 went to legal expenses.