Electronic vote survives test

Despite some glitches nationwide, America's grand experiment with electronic voting acquitted itself well overall this week.

Significantly, in the two most important close races — Senate contests in Montana and Virginia — the outcomes were decided without any serious allegations that voting equipment or fraud tainted the outcomes.

Utah County had its problems. Some people were turned away in the early hours of voting Tuesday because of programming errors. That sort of thing is inexcusable, considering some people may have missed their only opportunity of the day to vote. Luckily, there were no races in that county close enough to have been seriously compromised because of it.

Some Utah voters were confused by the smiley-faced Personal Choice Party and accidentally voted straight ticket. But that could easily have happened with punch-card ballots, as well. The difference is those voters could catch the mistake and change their minds with electronic voting.

In short, Tuesday's electronic election (about 80 percent of the nation voted this way) was nowhere near the meltdown that opponents of the system, and of the main provider, Diebold, had predicted.

Experts say problems are to be expected to a larger degree than normal any time new voting technology is used for the first time. But they also pronounced Tuesday's experience an overall success.

Elections depend to a large degree on public trust. If people believe election judges are compromised, or that politicians and their operatives in high places are conspiring to rig outcomes, no voting system in the world could overcome their misgivings. Unfortunately, examples of such fraud are sprinkled throughout American history.

The fear of electronic voting has always been that it could allow the perpetrators of fraud to operate on a large scale, and that their deeds could go undetected. But paper ballots have in the past been manipulated on a large scale. Deceased people have had ballots cast in their name. A well controlled electronic system with a verifiable paper trail provides protections against this sort of thing, barring large-scale conspiracies.

Americans must remain vigilant about elections. They must verify and proceed with skepticism, and listen seriously to the critics.

But electronic voting emerged this week with a strong vote of confidence.