Riverside County's Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to sue the state's top election official to regain the right to use electronic voting machines in November.
Officials in five other counties said they also might seek court approval to use their touch-screen voting machines on election day, which would overturn the temporary ban on their use and keep California on an aggressive path from paper to electronic balloting.
Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, noting security and technological concerns about the machines, banned electronic voting in four counties whose machines used unapproved software. He also decertified and set strict conditions for recertifying 10 other counties, including Riverside, that intended to use the machines in November.
Riverside County, which began using touch-screen machines in 2000, has been at the forefront of counties adopting electronic voting systems. The movement gained momentum nationwide when Florida's punch-card ballot problems brought the 2000 presidential election to a historic standstill.
Supervisors and the elections chief in Riverside County said Shelley's ban angered them, especially because the county had used its Sequoia Voting Systems machines for 29 elections without any significant problems.
"Clearly, in California, we don't want to regress back to the more flawed systems based upon paper," said Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend.
Officials in Orange and Santa Clara counties said they hoped to still use electronic voting in November by meeting Shelley's conditions.
A Shelley spokesman said Tuesday that the secretary acted appropriately and in the best interests of California voters when he barred the four counties from using their touch-screen devices for the November election and told the other 10 counties using other devices to meet 23 conditions.
Among Shelley's conditions is that county election officials print and record a copy of every ballot cast electronically so they can be audited or recounted, and that voters be given the option of voting on paper ballots.
"The secretary acted within his authority, and his actions are consistent with state and federal law," said the spokesman, Doug Stone. "He understands the challenges faced by local officials. We will work closely with them to replace the decertified machines or to implement the security measures for recertification. His goal is to make sure that every vote cast in November is cast with confidence and that the system to be used is secure."
