The best news for state elections officials was that nothing changed when they certified the statewide election results Monday.

There will be no recounts in the races certified by the State Board of Canvassers, which handles all statewide and multicounty races. Those include all of the federal offices and about two dozen legislative seats, as well as constitutional amendments, some school board seats, and the state and district court judicial retentions.

"The election process is pretty accurate, and the touch-screen voting machines are very accurate," said Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert, who oversees state elections. "We go through this process (of canvassing) to ensure that accuracy and give the results our stamp of approval."

The only new problem discovered in analyzing the election results was a problem with ballots in Wayne County, where voters were not allowed to vote in a state school board race because the ballots were not programmed correctly. The discrepancy did not affect the race, however, since Dixie Allen won by almost 35,000 votes over write-in candidate Tod Tesar, and only 1,192 voters cast ballots in Wayne County.

Programming errors also caused problems in Utah County and Weber County but were discovered and addressed on Election Day.

The certified results also mean that only three political parties, the Republican, Democratic and Constitution, retain ballot status for the 2008 election. To do so, the parties had to have their candidates in the three U.S. House of Representatives races receive a combined 2 percent of the votes, or just more than 11,000 votes.

The Constitution Party accomplished it because of a strong showing by Jim Noorlander in the 3rd District. He received 14,533 votes, which was just under 10 percent in the race eventually won by Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah.

The parties eliminated were the Green, Desert Greens, Libertarian and Personal Choice. To be placed on the ballot in 2008, they must gather 2,000 signatures.

Notable among third parties was the Personal Choice Party, which received well over 10 percent of the straight party vote in many counties and whose U.S. Senate candidate, Roger Price, received 9,089 votes. But many people changed their votes on the ballot away from Personal Choice candidates, and anecdotal evidence suggests that many voters actually thought that they were simply choosing to choose their own candidates, not a specific party.

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E-mail: jloftin@desnews.com