In drawing up blueprints for a new electronic voting procedure in the 2006 polls, the state elections office seems determined to cut its margins awfully thin.

A new system is compelled by a law, passed this spring, requiring the state to use machines that generate a paper printout voters can inspect before leaving the voting booth. Officials say they'll seek bids for the equipment early next year.

That's far too late.

Once notification periods and deadlines pass, complications and delays in the contractual process or delivery schedule are almost sure to arise. In the end, only a few months will be left before the election in which to test the system and train the polling crews.

Act 200, the law that mandates the upgrade, represents an important improvement. The inexorable movement toward electronic machines offers the potential of more efficient and user-friendly elections that are easily accessible to those with disabilities. But it also can leave voters wondering about the risk of election fraud.

Reports of irregularities in other states during the past two presidential elections have weakened public confidence in electronic voting — whether or not those reports were based on actual vote tampering.

Hawai'i, already saddled with a lackluster voter turnout, must not allow that to persist here. How many more people might wave off going to the polls if they see the whole process as untrustworthy? So it was right that legislators moved to enhance the credibility of our election system by requiring all e-voting machines to produce a "paper trail," one that both offers voters on-the-spot reassurance and a fallback means of confirming votes in case of an election challenge.

The law was signed early in July. Surely the bidding process could start this year.

Election officials themselves acknowledge that machines already exist that are capable of producing the requisite paper ballot. They seem satisfied that they can get the system in place and the bugs worked out before Election Day, but veterans of past election crews counter that even a year's lead time is less than ideal.

That assessment seems more reasonable. The elections office must turn up the heat now and solicit bids early, anticipating the likelihood of problems arising later. Leaving too little time for preparations during an election year is not the way to restore confidence in elections.