Where ballots aren't sufficiently clear to voters, they should be made so.
Well there's the problem. What do you do when you have ballots that are objectively unclear, like the infamous butterfly ballot? You can't invalidate the election and have a new one--apart from the logistical problems, the turnout is going to differ significantly based on the media attention and the knowledge that the cancelled ballots were so close.
The best option you have is to mandate judicial review of ballots well before the election. But even that doesn't save you in the situation Florida actually found itself in.
"objectively unclear, like the infamous butterfly ballot"
I saw a reproduction of this ballot in the newspaper at the time and I remember wondering what the problem was supposed to be. It seemed perfectly clear, but journalists were jumping on the bandwagon of calling it confusing.
Analysts believe a minimum of 4,000 people accidentally voted for Pat Robertson (in a heavily Jewish, not heavily conservative area, the anti-Semite Robertson got far more votes than polls or expectations). 10,000 ballots were invalidated from double-punching Gore and Robertson. It was a major UI failure.
There's nothing that you can do about the butterfly ballots after the fact short of re-running the election, which is out of the question as you state.
Well there's the problem. What do you do when you have ballots that are objectively unclear, like the infamous butterfly ballot? You can't invalidate the election and have a new one--apart from the logistical problems, the turnout is going to differ significantly based on the media attention and the knowledge that the cancelled ballots were so close.
The best option you have is to mandate judicial review of ballots well before the election. But even that doesn't save you in the situation Florida actually found itself in.