The report by the Washington-based Election Reform Information Project found that election systems in many states still are susceptible to the same flaws that caused the 2000 stalemate in Florida.

Money problems and concerns about the reliability of new, touchscreen voting systems delayed action on promised reforms in many states, the report found.

However, "South Carolina is doing better than most states," said Doug Chapin, director of the information project, a nonpartisan group that studies elections.

Part of the reason is that South Carolina already was in compliance with many of the new requirements of the federal Help America Vote Act, Chapin said.

For example, South Carolina already has a statewide registration database of voters. These databases help eliminate the potential for fraud and prevent voters from mistakenly being denied the chance to vote. Forty-one other states sought waivers to delay action on registration until 2006, the report found.

South Carolina has had a statewide registration database for 30 years, and all 46 counties have been able to connect to the database for more than a decade, said Marci Andino, executive director of the State Election Commission.

"We've always been a leader," in elections and registrations, Andino said. "It's gratifying that other states look to us as an example."

South Carolina still has 10 counties that use punch card voting machines, but the federal act does not require states to get rid of the machines. Instead, the law offered financial incentives to encourage states to retire the equipment that was at the center of the Florida deadlock in 2000.

Andino said those 10 counties plan to get rid of their punch card machines by November, when South Carolina will move to a statewide electronic system.

Although South Carolina is one of the best states in terms of election reform, that won't help the state's first-in-the-South Feb. 3 primary.

South Carolina and Utah are the only states where the Democratic Party, rather than the state government, must foot the bill for presidential primaries in 2004. Some counties offered their election machines, but the party wanted uniformity and so decided to use paper ballots, Andino said.