I get the impression that if you lived in Flori-duh you would know the current usage of the word - chad, see Marty's post at
http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=miscellany&Number=8247

It appears to be something to do with voting by punching holes - makes me think that our primitive "cross in a box" method has a lot going for it, although we do have plenty of "spoiled" votes too, sometimes people put a tick, rather than a cross and it doesn't count..