That's the way it has been through much of the nation's history. Other than Ohio in 2004 and Florida in 2000, you have to go back to the tight election of 1960 to find serious news stories about potential fraud. Does that really mean every other election in between was clean?

No, but it does mean that, if the problems of 2000 never happened, we wouldn't be using electronic voting machines in Utah or anywhere else.

It might be hard to find a bigger supporter of electronic voting than Herbert, whose office oversees all elections in the state. But even he admits we have the machines as a knee-jerk reaction to Florida that year. Yet he reminded me that more than 37,000 punch cards were temporarily lost in Utah County in 2004, due to human error. "There is no perfect system, because of the human element," he said, but electronic voting is as good as it gets.

My eldest son is studying in China. He sent an e-mail last week, describing how he tried to explain America's election system to his Chinese tutor, from the Electoral College to how each state has its own election system and rules. Language wasn't the biggest barrier in the conversation. His tutor was flummoxed.

It is indeed a messy way to empower people in the most powerful nation on earth, and it is made all the more frail by the use of volunteer labor. But that messiness is its strength. Regular everyday volunteers are the keepers of the oil that makes the flame of the republic flicker, and it seems only fitting that it be so. It's just that when 133.3 million people show up to vote, it's hard to keep from spilling here and there.

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Jay Evensen is editor of the Deseret News editorial page. E-mail: even@desnews.com. Visit his blog at www.deseretnews.com/blogs.