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Marc Giauque reportingThousands of poll workers in Utah are busy learning new tricks. Every one of them has to under-go training on the new electronic voting machines.
For some who call themselves old dogs in the voting business, it's definitely a new trick. And though, she has no security or an accuracy concern, Salt Lake County's clerk does have worries about logistics.
"Go ahead and lift up."
Election judges are taken, step by step, through setting them up. Some have a bit of trepidation about the new system, after-all, one woman says she couldn't even figure out her cell phone.
"It was too little and I would just get used to it and then they would put a thing up that said you have to have a new password and I mean it was just crazy."
Others are more confident.
"Unless we have to redo, reboot the things a lot well get along fine."
So for weeks, judges, poll managers and technicians have been learning the ins and outs of the machines. In Salt Lake County, there will also be a help-desk set up on Election Day, part of the two-and-a-half million dollars Clerk Sherrie Swensen wishes she didn't have to spend.
Sherrie Swensen: "I felt like there was a reaction in congress to fix something that I felt very confident and that we had done a good job running in Salt Lake County."
The County pays for additional workers, storage, even a forklift to move the carts full of machines. Other money pays for the machines, just over half of the number of manual booths the county has.
Sherrie Swensen: "We will be fine for the primary because, the turn out isn't typically very high in a primary as far as the general election there could be some lines but, in the 2008 presidential election that's our real concern."
Swensen does see a good side.
Sherrie Swensen: "People cannot accidentally vote for two candidates when they should vote for one. Also, it will notify them of races that they missed we call it an under-vote, so they will have an opportunity to go back and correct that."
But she doesn't expect a faster count, at least yet.
Many counties are setting up demos, so voters can get used to the new system.
