Associated Press Writer

At least one in 10 voters nationwide cast ballots in the last presidential election on electronic voting machines, whose popularity is growing as counties replace the antiquated systems blamed for Florida's hanging chad debacle.

But in Silicon Valley, computer scientists want to halt the trend _ at least until voting machines are redesigned to produce a paper record of every vote. They say paper backups offer more protection against hackers _ or political hacks _ who might tamper with electronic results.

The debate over the security of voting computers reached a peak Tuesday, when the Santa Clara County board of supervisors tentatively approved an investment of $20 million in 5,000 touch-screen machines.

The machines, whose screens look similar to ATM screens, allow voters to press a button to make their choices or touch keys to write in a candidate's name. But unlike ATMs, the terminals approved for Santa Clara County do not produce paper receipts.

The paperless system angered computer scientists gathered for the board meeting. If supervisors had rejected the contract bids and required a paper trail, Santa Clara would have become the nation's first county to purchase the so-called voter-verified paper backup system.

"I'm disappointed," said Peter G. Neumann, principal scientist at the computer science lab at Menlo Park-based SRI International. "You'd think we'd have enough of an understanding of computers to know that a voter-verified paper backup system is the absolute only way you can have any integrity whatsoever in elections."

Both sides of the security debate agree that the election system is at a crossroads _ in Santa Clara County, which must replace its punch-card system by the March 2004 presidential primary, and across the country.

Congress has set aside $3.9 billion for states to overhaul their voting systems, and hundreds of counties have opted for or are considering paperless touch-screen terminals. Elections experts say as many as 75 percent of voters nationwide will cast ballots electronically by 2010.

But putting faith in systems that create no records outside cyberspace could lead to election fraud of unprecedented proportions _ and undermine democracy itself, paper trail proponents say.

"Every election system we've ever created has had someone rig it, but it's been only on a local basis," said Bev Harris, author of "Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering in the 21st Century. "Now it only takes one programmer to insert malicious code into a computer system that runs election machines all over the country."

Harris and other voter-rights advocates worry that with each local decision to adopt electronic voting machines, more power gets concentrated among the four companies that dominate the market: Election Systems & Software, Sequoia Voting Systems, Diebold Election Systems and Hart InterCivic.

Smaller companies also vie for county contracts, but the top four write proprietary software code and assemble the vast majority of machines at polling facilities nationwide.

The largest, Omaha, Neb.-based ES&S, installed 74,000 systems used in more than 30,000 elections worldwide in the last decade. In the 2000 presidential election, ES&S terminals tallied more than 100 million ballots. And Georgia, which bought 19,000 Diebold machines, is among the states counting on a single company for solutions.

The concentration of power exposes new hazards for voting integrity. Advocates worry that an unethical software developer could insert a back door into the code, allowing someone to hack in remotely and change results. Scientists also worry that paperless machines, like all computers, could fall victim to inexplicable server crashes, power outages, frozen screens, software bugs and other glitches.

On the other hand, if voters could scrutinize paper receipts, they would be much more likely to find errors _ and have peace of mind, advocates say. In the event of an incorrectly registered vote, poll workers could trash both the receipt and the electronic record and the vote could be recast.

"Even my ATM has the courtesy of asking if I want a receipt," said Kim Alexander, president of the Sacramento-based non-profit California Voter Foundation. "My pay-at-the-pump Visa transaction is more secure than my voting ballot if my county goes to paperless voting."

The companies that make electronic voting machines say the security concerns are overblown, noting that they must meet standards set by the Federal Election Commission and the National Association of State Election Directors.

Some see the paper trail as a waste of money at a time when state and local governments face their worst budget shortfalls in years. In Santa Clara, where the technology downturn has caused unemployment and bankruptcy filings to spike, county officials say they're reluctant to spend money on the voter-verified system, which the California Secretary of State has not approved.

Paper receipts, which punch-card voting machines never produced, create potential hazards as well: They could encourage power brokers to offer incentives or punishments to constituents who provide proof they voted a certain way.


"You'll have printer jams, you'll run out of paper, you'll have voters say, 'That's not how I voted,' and you'll have to have procedures for letting them re-vote and to determine which of the receipts you printed was the valid one, and which of those constitute the official recount in case of a contested vote," Sequoia spokeswoman Kathryn Ferguson said.

In response to scientists' concerns, Oakland-based Sequoia built prototypes that produce paper receipts. Supervisors said they would negotiate with Sequoia, the preferred vendor, to include printers if the state required them.

But the security questions have made many officials nervous about any electronic system, whether it spits out paper or not. They also worried that every $3,000 terminal would become obsolete or incompatible with new software within a few years.

Several blamed Proposition 41, which requires nine counties to upgrade to electronic voting equipment by March 2004.

"I probably shouldn't say this, but if it were not for the … imposed timeline, our staff would say to stick with the old punch-card system," assistant county executive Pete Kutras said. "Voters are used to it and we haven't had any issues over tally accuracy."