New technology won't save voters from themselves, but we should approach Election Day with hope instead of dreading embarrassment after the last fiasco.

Florida voters will go to the polls on Sept. 10, casting ballots for the first time since high-tech machines replaced punch cards in many counties. But we should have learned by now that technology alone won't save us from ourselves.

Human error has already marred the upcoming election. The mistakes have been large, as when state elections officials instructed absentee voters to "vote for one pair" of Democratic gubernatorial candidates. Those who follow the advice and pick two candidates will have neither vote counted.

The mistakes have been small, as well, but none the less troubling. In Pinellas County, the supervisor of elections office inadvertently sent two ballots to one absentee voter. The recipient, Lillian C. Batiato, 79, alertly notified the office of its error. "I don't want this to be another hanky panky election," she said.

Batiato should be thanked for her civic responsibility, but knowledgeable observers don't fear hanky panky as much as human frailty in the upcoming election. A variety of forces are combining to make this primary election one of the greatest challenges elections officials have ever faced.

Half of Florida voters will be casting a ballot on touch-screen machines for the first time, and many others will face a new experience filling out an optically scanned ballot. Many voters will need help with the new technology, yet elections supervisors complain of a shortage of skilled poll workers. In Broward County, for example, 6,200 poll workers are needed, but only 3,200 have been trained so far. The Legislature will need to address that problem next year.

Even with extra money from the state, elections supervisors have had a difficult time preparing temporary employees for the task ahead. The woman training Pinellas County poll workers on the new touch-screen technology admits that they will forget 80 percent of what they're taught by Election Day unless they do their homework. In Hillsborough County, "the new machines changed things," said Pam Iorio, elections supervisor. "We have a percentage of our old work force that doesn't want to continue with us because of that change."

Meanwhile, a variety of groups will be watching for miscues. The American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP and Florida Coalition for Disability Rights, among others, will be on hand to file legal challenges and to collect complaints when anything goes wrong. And it probably will, because even if everyone's motive is pure, it is probably asking too much to flawlessly replace the state's elections apparatus in less than two years.

"It's almost like you're setting us up for failure," Kurt Browning, Pasco County elections supervisor, said of those critics who are circling like vultures. "It's almost like you've decided that Florida's going to have a crappy election and there's no hope."

Browning has a point. We're all in this together. While technology won't save us from further embarrassment, the patience and good will of voters and poll workers alike would at least get us off to a hopeful start.

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