Additionally, Diebold will have "hundreds" of workers in Utah, Demma said, all prepared to handle the expected and, more likely, the unexpected issues.

"I'm personally not expecting everything to go perfect. But I'm confident that these problems can be resolved quickly," Demma said.

Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen said that they have done more than six hours of training for poll workers and plan to have a hotline for questions and problems on Election Day. They will also have technicians scattered across the county to quickly respond to problems.

While she expects some glitches, she does not expect any votes to be lost. Because the machines save each ballot after it is cast, even a significant failure will not delete the memory cards or erase the paper voting rolls. And since every polling station will have at least three machines, a broken machine will not stop voting.

"I'm not going to say there will not be bumps, because there always is and this is a new system," Swensen said. "But we went to every extreme to make sure they'll work, and I think the public will be very pleased."

Utah County elections coordinator Sandy Hoffman said that the "common problems, like paper installed backwards, are easy to fix" and poll workers are being taught to do it on their own during more than four hours of training. More technical things, such as programming the memory cards, are the responsibility of her office.

"If I do my job right, things should work," she said. "I've never had an election go perfectly well, and I would never be bold enough to predict that everything will work. But I anticipate minor problems, not major ones."

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E-mail: jloftin@desnews.com