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In the wee hours of Nov. 8, 2000, it became clear there would be no immediate winner in the race for the American presidency.
But there were other kinds of winners. There was the news media, whose TV ratings and website traffic soared. And the comedians, both professional and amateur.
Now, here come the tech companies, ready to make a killing on the public's appetite for a better way to have their votes count.
Realizing that states are looking for ways to spend their surpluses, and that many elections officials now believe that their very jobs depend on improving the mechanics of American democracy, tech firms are finding ways to sell their wares as a replacement for chad-addled voting systems.
Next week, in Sacramento, California, many of the voting industry's biggest players will convene at the 2001 Election Technology Expo, at the behest of that state's Secretary of State, Bill Jones. Jones has been one of the country's leaders in showing interest in better voting systems, and the companies will be trying to show him their stuff.
And there's lots of stuff.
Using a quote from President John F. Kennedy, Unisys announced on Thursday that it was going to be a key player in the voting market.
"Our task is not to fix blame for the past, but to fix the course for the future," the company said in statement, explaining that it would team up with Microsoft and Dell to sell tech voting systems to municipalities.
Kevin Curry, a vice president for the company's North American public sector initiatives, said that Unisys was an old hand in the voting business, and that this move wasn't to be considered a debut of any sort. It was just announcing a partnership, Curry said, because the demand for new tech in the election business just became huge.
When discussing the voting business, there are now two distinct time periods that experts mention: Pre-Florida, when the market for new elections systems was fairly tiny and limited to a few specialized players, and the current period, post-Florida, when the prize for upgrading precincts is estimated in the billions.
In addition to the niche firms that have been providing elections systems for decades, there are tech giants like Unisys (UIS) and Cisco (CSCO) that have now moved in.
But what makes the industry even more chaotic are the startups that entered the game a few years ago with dreams of pursuing Internet voting -- companies that are now seeing some of their innovations in security and dependability become highly desired.
Safevote, for example, a two-year-old company that has conducted some trials of its Internet-based voting machines, has seen interest in its technology skyrocket since Florida's presidential election debacle.
"Before Florida, we thought we would have to provide a detailed proof of concept before launching," said Ed Gerck, Safevote's CEO. "Florida compressed the time for us."
Florida's compression was felt everywhere. In the past experts predicted precincts would be wired within four to ten years; now, they say that voters can expect to be voting electronically at the soonest by 2002, and at most by 2006.
It's hard to say whether these are just heady predictions in a marketplace where e-voting is currently the hot thing. After all, there are several concerns about e-voting machines at precincts, not to mention remote Internet voting.
The companies who make these systems say that such concerns -- mostly about the systems' security and accessibility to the disabled -- are non-issues. Curry, of Unisys, said he was confident the company could provide voting technology that was in line with regulations set down by federal and local authorities.
Safevote's Gerck was more authoritative.
"I have been developing this technology for four and a half years. We are sure we can make it secure," he said.
But if companies are trying to press their product's security and accessibility, they also seem to be trying to speed up deployment.
Unisys said that with Microsoft and Dell, its systems would be available right now; Safevote's machines will use off-the-shelf components and an Intel architecture, all of which can be made ready as soon as counties want it.
