The Republican candidate in Utah House of Representatives District 37 did no good for himself or his party when he challenged the legal registration of 1,495 residents of the district's Holladay-area neighborhoods days before Tuesday's election. Republican Brice Derek Carsno claimed they did not live in the precincts they are registered in and should not have the right to vote.

Similar incidents were reported in Florida and in some other swing states. For example, a Georgia resident challenged the voting rights of all people in his district with Latino surnames. But Utah had been clean of efforts to sabotage the election process - until the incident in District 37.

Carsno, who subsequently - and justly - lost in a landslide, aimed his charge almost entirely at Democrats but took pains to include one voter registered with the Reform Party and another with the American Party. Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen said no Republicans or unaffiliated voters were on Carsno's hit list.

Swensen determined Carsno's claims were groundless and said he could be subject to a charge of voter intimidation, a federal crime in a federal election. If not criminal, Carsno's effort to disenfranchise voters with political affiliations other than his own is reprehensible in the extreme.

The law does allow any voter to challenge any other voter, but such challenges must be directed at each individual and include some basis for the charge in each case.

Carsno admitted that he had expected all 1,496 to have to fill out provisional ballots after showing proof of residence, which would have required judges to validate each ballot individually, slowing down the ballot-counting process. Provisional ballots, authorized in the wake of the 2000 Florida voting debacle, are cast by voters whose registration is in question because their names don't show up on registration rolls.

Clearly, provisional ballots were not meant to be used as a tool to throw the election into chaos, as it appears Carsno was trying to do.

Utah's election had its twists and turns, particularly in Salt Lake County, where Republican incumbent Nancy Workman is facing felony charges of misusing public funds. The Democratic Party sued over the Republicans' efforts to replace Workman on the ballot, but the ingredients for that thick plot were all legitimate legal questions.

Carsno's blatant attempt to intimidate voters who were likely to vote for his opponent falls into another category entirely, a shady area of political trickery where Utah does not want to go.