E-Vote Devices Win Partial Favor

But voters in those counties -- including Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside -- should be given the option of voting on paper if they don't have confidence in electronic balloting, the Voting Systems and Procedures Panel suggested.

The panel also recommended that any other counties that want to offer electronic voting be required to use machines that provide a paper trail so votes can be audited and recounted if necessary.

The recommendations were forwarded to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, who is expected to announce by week's end whether he'll accept them.

Several voter advocacy groups have urged Shelley to ban the use of electronic voting systems until technical problems were fixed and machines produced and stored paper ballots for reference in the event of a recount or audit.

Voter registrars who said they would be forced to spend millions of dollars to produce alternatives to their electronic voting machines generally said they were relieved to learn of the panel's recommendation. The same panel recommended last week that Shelley prohibit four counties -- San Diego, San Joaquin, Kern and Solano -- from using their Diebold touch-screen voting machines in November.

"What this recommendation shows is they looked at the systems and counties as individual entities. They didn't just broad-brush it," said Steve Rodermund, registrar of voters in Orange County, which uses more than 10,000 voting machines produced by Hart InterCivic of Texas. "I'm very grateful to the secretary of state that they actually took the time to look at this system by system."

If Shelley follows the committee's recommendations, Los Angeles County would be able to use its Diebold machines in early voting stations in libraries and other public places in the days before the November election. On election day, Los Angeles County voters will use an ink-and-paper voting system.

Electronic voting in California came under scrutiny after the March primary election because several counties had problems ranging from inoperable machines to the issuance of incorrect ballots.

In Orange County, polling officials estimated that 2,000 voters were given wrong access code numbers to enter into their voting machines, causing them to vote in races they shouldn't have and preventing them from voting in the right races.