Quoting:

"IT'S VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR A VOTER TO ... MAKE A MISTAKE," [LT. GOVERNOR] HERBERT SAID.

"WE'VE GONE TO THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF TECHNOLOGY, AND I DON'T THINK THERE'S ANY GOING BACK."

Yet "going back" is exactly what Florida's Republican governor and a Republican legislature did in Florida in 2007, not even a year after converting dozens of counties to touchscreen voting systems.

Elections officers in Florida had their confidence in those touchscreen machines shattered practically "out of the box" when Sarasota County, Florida experienced a massive county-wide voting system failure in November, 2006 that resulted in the loss of 18,000 votes (14+%).

I was there on the day of that election and subsequently spoke personally to dozens of voters who emphatically affirmed that they saw their vote for a candidate named Christine Jennings deleted by the touchscreen machines.

Those were the lucky attentive ones, the ones who got assistance from pollworkers who helped them salvage their votes before leaving the polling stations.

But for every voter who noticed the error, another ten never did.

Ms. Jennings "lost" by 369 votes, less than 1/4 of a percent. She was robbed.

Permanently.

Lt. Governor Herbert:

You describe Utah as a "Brave New World" . . .

. . . like that's a GOOD thing.