As hanging and dimpled chad become household terms across the nation, an Ames man holds a 40-year-old patent that could ensure the tally trauma in Florida never happens again.

The punch-card system that is the culprit of confusion and speculation over the Nov. 7 presidential-election votes originally was developed by IBM in the late 1950s.

At the time, Ames resident Merle Prater was working for the company as an engineer in New York. With another IBM engineer, Prater developed the portable, hand-held punch-card system for smaller commercial applications, he said. Perforated parts of the card were removed using a stylus, and the chad — the punched out piece of paper — was born.

In 1961, Prater received a patent for his specialized stylus, a development that could have prevented the hanging-chad controversy in Florida.

“This would have never happened with our system,” 78-year-old Prater said. “In our system, we had two rubber sleeves that grab the end of the chad when it came through and wouldn’t let it go. It pushed the chad down and — thunk! — you knew you pushed it out.”

Prater, who received an electrical engineering degree in 1944 from Iowa State College, said the method never was intended to be used as a voting system.

“We did not envision it to be used for voting, where the rank and file of people might not be adequately instructed,” he said. “So, the system probably has never worked too well for voting for the last 20 or 25 years.”

He said the punch card’s use in the voting process probably never will be foolproof.

“The system we had undoubtedly has been engineered and re-engineered by the voting companies that have come along, and it has jeopardized the voting system across the country,” Prater said.

The accuracy of the punch card, he said, is dependent on many factors, which range from the amount of friction in the system, the type of stylus, the kind of paper, the reading system and the strength of the four holding tabs that connect the chad to the ballot.

“These are the kinds of things you get into in an engineering situation,” Prater said. “Humidity, like in Florida, can be a big problem. It softens and changes the card dimensions, so the punching procedure can be out of line, and what you have is a hanging chad.”

The counting machines used in Florida may have loosened chads until they fell out or pushed chads back into the card, “creating no vote at all,” he said. “I was told that there were chads laying all over the place and in the machines.”

Prater said the voting system in the United States needs to be modified to prevent further complications.

“It’s an outdated system,” he said. “There should be a national standard for voting, and we don’t have it.”

Although most Iowa counties use an optical scan ballot for elections, absentee votes in Iowa used to be cast using the punch-card method, said Sandy Steinbach, Iowa director of elections at the secretary of state office.

“The punch-card ballot has been known to have problems for a number of years,” she said. “I’m actually glad it’s not in Iowa.”

However, the cost-efficient punch-card system has withstood the test of time in states such as Florida.

“I think it is a fairly inexpensive way to vote,” Steinbach said. “[Punch cards] obviously have some problems, but for the most part, they are reasonably accurate.”

Prater said the speculation over improperly cast ballots probably would not have come into play in Florida if the presidential election between Democratic candidate Vice President Al Gore and Republican candidate Texas Gov. George Bush had not come down to the wire.

“For most elections, it wouldn’t make too much difference, because they probably just throw [the questioned ballots] out,” he said. “But I don’t blame the Gore people for coming back to the Bush people and saying, ‘Look, this is wrong.’ Let me tell you, it is wrong.”