Superior Court Judge Henry Hight was emphatic: The State Board of Election's attempt to hold a special election in Carteret County Jan. 11 was "arbitrary and capricious, contrary to law and affected by error of law," he said Friday.

Judge Hight confirmed practically universal expectations that there was no defensible basis for the cockeyed scheme cobbled together by the election board after it had exhausted several other options for completing a botched election. In early voting, a malfunctioning electronic voting machine in coastal Carteret County failed to record the votes of 4,438 voters in a race where challenger Steve Troxler, a Republican, leads incumbent Democratic Agriculture Commissioner Britt Cobb by about 2,300 votes in statewide totals.

Potentially, anyway, the missing 4,438 votes could make a difference and swing the election to Commissioner Cobb -- though it seems unlikely because a majority of the 4,438 are Republicans and because Mr. Troxler was winning about 60 percent of the properly recorded votes in that county. Thus it seems likely that Mr. Troxler would win the vast majority of those 4,438 votes. The elections board, however, offered a special election to those 4,438, plus another 14,000 or so who didn't vote the first time. That was nuts.

The just solution is obvious. Because the local elections board knows exactly who the 4,438 unrecorded voters are, the state ought to invite each of those persons to fill out a replacement vote, if they so choose, so the election can be completed in Carteret and an official winner declared.

However, state law does not provide for such a specific remedy. Instead, it appears to require that any new election be held on a statewide basis. And calling a new statewide election to complete the race for state agriculture commissioner has three problems. First of all, it would cost an estimated $3 million -- money the state does not have. And it would further delay making a decision.

But the most serious drawback to a new statewide election is that it would in effect disenfranchise the 3.5 million persons who voted in the race on Nov. 2 -- throwing their votes out and leaving the choice to the few hundred thousand voters who bother to vote in a new election. That drastic and impractical course would turn the whole notion of representative democracy on its ear and allow a relative minority public to trump the wishes of a healthy majority that cast ballots in the fall.

If state law does not allow Carteret County simply to complete the flawed election among voters whose names are fully known and who tried to vote lawfully once before, then state law is stupid and requires legislative attention next year.

In the short run, the State Board of Elections would face a hard choice: either call a costly new statewide election, or pursue the wiser course of declaring the election over and certifying Mr. Troxler the winner. Admittedly, that's an imperfect solution. But holding a statewide election that tosses out 3.5 million votes, costs millions of dollars and causes further delays would be crazy. This is a case where the merely imperfect is far preferable to outright lunacy.