It took a toy train, several spring-loaded mousetraps, a cup of water, a balloon, a labyrinth of wires, a laptop computer and more than four months of labor just to cast a vote.

Members of the MSU Rube Goldberg Machine Team wouldn't have it any other way - they like to complicate things.

"It's 'Mouse Trap' with guts," team member Gary Sharon said.

The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest pays homage to late cartoonist Rube Goldberg, who specialized in drawing whimsical machines with complex mechanisms to perform simple tasks.

This year's challenge was to select, mark and cast an election ballot in a minimum of 20 steps, but the more steps, the better. Operating with more than 30 steps, MSU's machine is a model of inefficiency.

This is the second year Sharon, a chemistry senior, has participated in the contest, and he said there was a vast difference between the team's attempt in the competition last year.

"We have improved 100-fold," Sharon said. "Last year, we just threw everything together, and this year, we planned everything out."

Last year, the team was reprimanded for having a bowling ball fall off its machine; this year, team members are prepared.

The team placed ninth in a regional competition against eight Purdue University teams in 2003.

"At least we were in the top 10," team founder and biochemistry senior Erica Scheller said jokingly. "I hope it will go a lot better this year."

On Friday night, the team will load its contraption into a U-Haul and drive across the country. The group will be pitting its creation against universities from across the nation on Saturday at the annual contest held at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

Among those competing in the upcoming national contest are teams from the University of Texas-Austin, Ferris State University and the University of Toledo. Previous winners at the national level have had their machines featured on "Late Show with David Letterman."

The winning machines must complete two successful runs, and points are deducted if students have to manually assist the machine once it has started. Teams are judged on completion of the task, creativity, the number of steps used and how well the machines exemplify the Rube Goldberg spirit.

"We might get more points for team cohesiveness," Scheller said. "As long as we don't argue, we hope to always get those ones."

While most machines are designed to make difficult tasks simple, Scheller and her teammates have spent the last four months building a machine to make simple tasks complex.

Using materials gathered from garages and RadioShack, the team threw in everything but the kitchen sink and created a 5-foot-tall, 5-foot-wide and 6-foot-deep contraption of complexity.

Armed with screwdrivers, duct tape and paint, members of the group worked for several hours each Sunday in the garages behind Farrall Hall, piecing a hodgepodge of ideas and steps into one functioning machine.

The premise behind the machine is that a crash-test worker in the automotive industry must submit a ballot for health benefits, but would rather play hooky and spend the day at the beach. A simple turn of a key ignites a domino effect of actions; a balloon inflates, a fan clicks on and a mousetrap is triggered, which causes a toy train to move around a track. Several switches and infrared sensors later, a small robotic motor touches a key on a laptop computer and triggers the printer to mark a ballot and place it into a ballot box.

"A lot of different disciplines are pulled into this," team member John Remmler said as he noted the mechanical, electrical and hydraulic energy used to power the machine.

"I like doing stuff that is creative and open-ended," Remmler, a 2003 MSU graduate, said. "Most engineering is very closed, and it's fun to look at that stuff to see what contraption people will come up with. It reminds me of something Walt Disney would do because it is very whimsical."

The team had a little help from others.

MSU donated garage space, and ASMSU, MSU's undergraduate student government, donated $2,000 for supplies.

The team has relied on a system of engineering and trial-and-error to get the kinks worked out of its machine.

When the MSU team showcased its contraption at the Feb. 21 Regional Rube Goldberg Machine Contest held on campus, it experienced a few minor setbacks.

The first trial of the machine failed after a slight mousetrap malfunction.

"Everything else worked really well," Scheller said.

More than a month later, after applying a few more brush strokes of paint and correcting a few glitches, the team is geared up to head to nationals.

"It doesn't matter how great a certain part of the machine is working," team member and materials science and engineering senior Stacey Schroeder said during a trial run in February as she adjusted wires.

"It all depends on how great everything works when it is put together."

Amy Davis can be reached at davisam8@msu.edu