"It was a simple problem, but a little tricky to find," Peterson said. "The readers worked fine, everything worked like it was supposed to. It was a setup mistake by our programming team that sets up the election."

Ironically, the Personal Choice Party picked up just a few presidential votes in the recount. In that case, voters were the ones who may have made a mistake.

"We think what happened is that when people opened the ballot book, the first thing they saw was the straight-party choice," Peterson said. "The last party listed was Personal Choice. We think some people might have thought, no, I don't want to vote straight party, I want to vote what I want, and then they checked personal choice."

The computer system does count votes if someone punches a straight-party ticket on the first page but then goes on to punch various parties on the following pages. It simply counts any unpunched races under the straight-party option.

For example, if someone chose the Republican straight-party option but then voted for the Democratic nominee for governor, the computer assumes that the person meant to vote for the Democrat in that one race and Republican in all the rest.

Though the outcomes remained the same, both winners and losers learned they had thousands more supporters.

For example, in the governor's race, winner Jon Huntsman Jr. added nearly 30,000 votes while Scott Matheson added almost 5,000. Chris Cannon picked up 25,000 to Democrat Beau Babka's 4,355 added votes in the 3rd District Congressional race.

The biggest difference was found in the 2nd District Congressional race. Republican challenger John Swallow improved his win over incumbent Democrat Jim Matheson in Utah County from 54-44 to 62-36 by picking up an extra 5,817 votes to Matheson's additional 825. But Matheson still easily won re-election overall.

Jackson said none of the votes were ever lost.

"The votes were always accounted for," he said, "it was just how they were presented."

The incorrect tally was never official. Utah County is scheduled to hold its official canvass on Monday, and Jackson expects officials will then be able to certify the results.

The corrected figures are available online at www.co.utah.ut.us/dept/clerkaud/elections/electrslts/2004_gen/

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Contributing: Associated Press

E-mail: twalch@desnews.com