THE NOV. 7 ELECTION in Rhode Island did not go the way the pollsters predicted. They had Governor Carcieri up by roughly 7 points -- in poll after poll -- and saw Sen. Lincoln Chafee dramatically closing the gap in the waning days against Sheldon Whitehouse.

The results, thus, were stunning: Mr. Whitehouse won in a cakewalk, and Mr. Carcieri very nearly got heaved out of office. Clearly, many Democratic voters whom the pollsters were unable to reach turned out at the polls. Were they cell-phone owners, difficult to poll? Were they rare or casual voters, and thus absent from the lists that form the basis for the polling of "likely" voters?

We know that Harrah's was pushing hard for its casino, and that casino supporters strongly favored Democrats. And we know that Harrah's gave the labor unions, through WorkingRI, $200,000 to help get out gambling-friendly voters. Meanwhile, many of the motivated voters across America were angry at Republicans over America's failure to halt violence in Iraq, blaming that on President Bush.

The most striking impact was a huge upsurge in the number of Rhode Island voters casting straight-party ballots -- checking off their desire to vote for the entire slate of Democrats, up and down the ballot, rather than taking the time and using their brains to weigh individual candidates.

The straight-party voting option is the legacy of 19th and 20th-Century machine politics. The political bosses did not want voters thinking independently -- they wanted them marching in lockstep, with the promise of patronage and taxpayer-funded benefits in exchange for party loyalty. Years ago, voters pulled an actual lever to punch the names of all of one party's candidates.

Fifty years ago, more than half of the states allowed straight-party voting. But in recent years, states have weaned themselves off the system, on the sensible grounds that it too strongly favors the dominant party and that voters should be encouraged to do their homework as citizens and weigh individual candidates. The straight-party system tends to devastate the minority party in down-ballot races, such as for state legislature.

"It seems pretty clear that what it was designed for is to keep people voting for a particular party without thinking about who they were voting for," Richard Niemi, a University of Rochester political-science professor, told the newspaper The Hill.

Which may be why Rhode Island is one of only 16 states still clinging to the machine legacy. (The others are Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.) In the Ocean State, the party in power impressively has every angle covered. Our election laws are designed to help preserve and consolidate majority power, rather than encourage competitive elections.

On Nov. 7, the straight-party system worked its wonders for Rhode Island Democrats. Some 61,357 voters cast a straight-party ballot for the Democrats -- a whopping increase of more than 23,000, or about two-thirds, over the last midterm election. Only 18,424 cast straight ballots for Republicans.

That obviously gave Mr. Whitehouse a dramatic boost, and quite possibly the winning edge. Subtract the straight-party ballots, and Mr. Chafee beat Mr. Whitehouse handily. It appears that Mr. Chafee was the preference of voters who actually took the time to mark their ballots for either candidate.

Thus, one could argue the straight-party option in Rhode Island had a tremendous impact on Nov. 7, helping flip control of the Senate from the Republicans to the Democrats.

Of course, it seems likely that many -- if not most -- of those straight-party-ballot voters would have opted for the Democrat, in any case. But many might have sided with Mr. Chafee, whose last name is virtually a brand, and whose liberal values seem to represent those of most Rhode Islanders.

The people who really suffered, though, were down the ballot -- the reformers trying to bring more balance to the General Assembly. They got swept away in the flood. Many of the casual voters who went straight-ticket -- and thus returned the local incumbent to power -- probably never heard of either candidate in those races.

Interestingly, this phenomenon played out nationally. Of the 29 seats that House Republicans lost, 15 were in the 16 states with the straight-party option -- and another three races from those states could possibly flip, the Hill reported.

There are efforts underway in many of those states to change the system. Citizens groups and the out party tend to push for reform, while the party in power resists. It's not hard to understand why Republicans tend to support the reform more than Democrats. The latter party's incestuous relationship with public-employee unions gives it a ready-made get-out-the-vote machine, well-suited to encouraging people to vote the straight Democratic ticket.

In other words, don't hold your breath waiting for this reform to reach Rhode Island.

Edward Achorn is The Journal's deputy editorial-pages editor. His e-mail address is eachorn@projo.com.