The biggest potential problems with electronic voting machines may have nothing to do with nefarious computer hackers or election official malfeasance.

Instead, voters may find themselves frustrated by lines caused by the same mundane problems that can plague home computers, such as paper jams, computer freezes or power failures. They are also problems that elections officials are preparing for with thorough testing of the machines, extensive training of poll workers and back-up plans for worst-case scenarios.

The early voting period, which begins today, will also provide valuable lessons before the crush of election day.

That preparation is prompted in part by the fact that in almost every election, something goes wrong. But it also stems from recent experiences in other states, where malfunctions with the new electronic voting machines — some of which are the identical Diebold machines that will be used in Utah — have caused polls to open late, created long waits in primary elections with only minimal turn-out, and even forced voters to resort to old-fashioned paper ballots.

"We know there will be problems, because there are always problems," said Pat Beckstead, elections coordinator for Davis County. "But we think we're ready. We feel very confident that everything will be OK."

So far, California and Mississippi — both states using, at least partially, touch-screen machines from Diebold — have had the most reports of problems with the new voting machines. Most prominent were "user error" such as paper jams on the machines' printers, voting cards that were programmed incorrectly and battery failures.

In almost all of the reported cases, "user error" was blamed, such as printer tape being installed incorrectly by poll workers or a failure to test battery power (or supply back-up batteries) before the election started.

Joe Demma, the chief of staff for Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert, whose office oversees elections in Utah, watched last week's primary elections in Mississippi because that state used the same machines as Utah. There, the many problems evolved from user error, especially since the political parties were running the primaries, instead of county and state elections officials.

After witnessing last week's problems in Mississippi, "we are encouraging the clerks to be prepared for the kinds of problems that were human error." Among things that were not done in Mississippi that most Utah county clerks are doing include logic and accuracy tests of the machines, hours of poll worker training and "immediate response" teams that can be quickly deployed to fix malfunctioning machines.