...20 or so thousand people who couldn't figure out a ballot...

Well look at that ballot form! There WERE two holes in the Gore panel. I can understand the logic of assuming that the first hole belongs to Gore rather than to some guy on the facing page.

...If there was a comprehension problem there was time BEFORE the election to bring it up...

It's kinda difficult to resolve such problems before the election if the voters didn't get to see them until they were IN the booth. AND the officials couldn't understand them either.

It doesn't matter whose fault it was but there needs to be some way of fixing such problems; otherwise future form designers will have no reason to restrain themselves from using similar techniques.