A big leap for Utah voters

Utah has taken the intelligent road to voting reform. Rather than leaping into a brave new world right after the 2000 election debacle in Florida, officials here decided to sit back and let other states become guinea pigs first.

Smart move. A lot of those states had problems with new electronic voting machines, and a few of them identified important things few people had thought of before, such as the need to provide paper printouts to confirm a vote.

But now it's Utah's turn. A federal law clearly gives the state no choice.

This Wednesday, the state will conduct a public test of four machines that are vying for the contract to handle Utah's election needs. From 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., at the South Towne Mall, anyone of voting age will be allowed to take the machines for a test drive, participate in a mock election and leave comments and impressions behind for state officials to consider.

Whichever machine wins the bid will be the one you face on Election Day 2006. As we're wont to remind people often, all citizens of voting age have a duty to educate themselves on issues and candidates and cast a ballot in a real election. But while they don't have a similar obligation to participate in this mock election to test new equipment, it is clearly in voters' best interest to do so if at all possible.

Frankly, the case for this type of radical voting reform has yet to be clearly articulated; nor are we entirely comfortable with Washington forcing changes on something that has, by tradition, always been a local government matter.

Were it not for the Help America Vote Act, which grew out of Florida's problems, Utah would have no reason to make such a large and expensive switch. Florida's problems had more to do with the use of the wrong card stock on punch ballots than anything else. Utah experienced a similar hanging-chad incident years ago and quickly learned the lesson. Since then, things have run smoothly and, within an acceptable margin of error, accurately.

But it does little good to raise a fuss at this point, and the new law does require some changes that make sense. For example, handicapped citizens must be able to vote without compromising their right to a secret ballot. That hasn't always been the case in the past.

The new equipment is expected to cost the state about $27 million, with all but $7 million of that supplied by the federal government. Elections traditionally are administered by counties. Not surprisingly, Utah's counties worry they will be stuck holding the bill.

State lawmakers need to accept that payment responsibility, instead. Meanwhile, no Utah county should try to opt out of this change because of such concerns. Like it or not, 21st century voting is here. The best choice is to go to the South Towne Mall on Wednesday and make your voice heard.