When Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski tried out a new electronic voting machine in that state recently, her hand apparently slipped and she accidentally cast a "no" vote, even though she meant to press "yes."

Welcome to the potential nightmare of the ballot box, 21st century style.

We hope this little anecdote reported by the New York Times isn't an omen of what is to come on Nov. 2. But after the debacle of 2000, it's not all that hard to imagine.

Utahns are lucky. They will get to vote the old-fashioned way this year as a state committee continues to decide between two bidders vying to handle electronic voting the next time around. But an estimated one-third of the nation's 150 million registered voters live in precincts that will require them to use computers, and that could, under the worst circumstances, make Florida in 2000 look like the good old days.

No one seems certain that the new technology is secure. Some have questioned the fact that the companies involved all have a record of making political donations — some to Republicans, and others to Democrats. There are questions about how easy it would be to tamper with the results or to infect the programs with viruses. There are concerns about whether voters will be able to use the touch screens easily or whether, like Mikulski, they will find it too easy to make mistakes and get confused.

The only thing that seems to be completely clear is that too many states are rushing into electronic voting.

Thank goodness Utah isn't one of them. A group of computer scientists sent a letter recently to state elections officials urging them to be careful. Above all, they want the state to choose a system that would create a paper receipt verifying how a voter voted. Without this, they say, the computer's word would be final, and there would be no way to double-check results in a tight race.

That sounds like good advice. Unfortunately, neither bidder in Utah has machines that make paper receipts. They ought to rectify that before the state decides to award a bid.

After the hype of 2000, it's easy to lose focus. The most important thing is not to move toward electronic voting. The most important thing is to provide the most accurate and safe voting system possible, making sure — within reasonable limits — that every legitimately cast ballot counts.

No system is fool-proof. Even under ideal conditions, push-pin punch cards and paper ballots have slight margins of error. And no system is tamper-proof, particularly if some of the people involved turn out to be dishonest.

But in the interest of representative government, and the public's trust in the electoral process, the states that have gone electronic need to hope Mikulski was just unusually careless.