Following problems with its lever-operated voting machines in 1986, Leon County switched to optical scanners by 1992. The move put the county ahead of the curve when Florida outlawed punch cards and lever machines in the wake of the 2000 election.

In 2001, Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho earned kudos for having the lowest level of spoiled votes, or uncountable ballots, in the state for the 2000 election.

SECURITY TEST: Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho wanted to see if hackers could tamper with voting results. Diebold Election Systems called the test a "very foolish" act.

But four years later, after hearing reports of potential security holes in the optical-scanner screen systems, Sancho began to worry and arranged for his to be tested.

On Dec. 13, in the company of a group of citizen activists, he invited two computer experts to try to hack into his machines. Sancho's test showed that someone with access to a machine's memory card and the right skills could change the results on that individual machine by modifying small programs on the machine's memory card.

Sancho's test stirred up a longsimmering debate over the security of electronic voting machines. It also triggered a firestorm of protest from the equipment manufacturer, Diebold Election Systems. Its newer voting machines, the company argued, were impervious to such attacks. Older optical-scan technology in the 1991 models used in Leon County could only be hacked if election officials abandoned normal security procedures, it says.

In a two-page letter, Diebold lawyer Michael Lindroos called Sancho's testing a "very foolish" act. The company was so offended by Sancho's test that it -- along with the only two other voting equipment vendors -- refused to sell Leon County the machines Sancho needed to comply with federal disability access guidelines, and the county nearly lost $564,000 in grant funds. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Sue Cobb threatened Sancho with "legal action" if he did not come up with a plan to get the required equipment by May 1.

Sancho got a vindication of sorts on Valentine's Day, when California's Voting Systems Technology Assessment Advisory Board confirmed the vulnerabilities that had been uncovered in Leon County. The California analysis stated that the 16 bugs in the system were "all easily fixable" but also warned that the only way to detect such attacks is by "examining the paper ballots."

Two weeks later, Dawn Roberts, director of Florida's Division of Elections, issued a four-page advisory containing enhanced security safeguards for all voting systems in Florida. Her memo mentioned the California assessment but made no reference to the Leon County test.

Roberts says that Sancho conducted his test under a cloud of secrecy, and the reason her technical advisory memo refers to the California report, and not Leon County's test, she says, is because unlike Sancho's test it was "transparent" and contained published results with factual information.

The refusal by Diebold to sell Leon County voting equipment put the county in a "real Catch-22," recalls Leon County Commissioner Jane Sauls. Eventually, Cobb intervened, and Diebold sold Leon County the machines it needed in April. But Attorney General Charlie Crist is investigating why the three machine manufacturers refused in the first place and whether the companies might have violated antitrust laws.

Miami lawyer Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, a partner with the Duane Morris law firm and immediate past chairwoman of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, says Sancho did a favor for Floridians. "Ion Sancho proved that there is an incredible opening for fraud because of technical deficiencies" in the voting equipment.

In June, a report on voting system security issued by the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law identified 120 potential threats to voting technologies used today. Countermeasures recommended by Brennan include "automatic random audits comparing voter-verified paper records to the electronic record."

Voting equipment expert Roy Saltman has his doubts about the ultimate impact of Sancho's test. "The only thing it taught anybody was keep untrustworthy people away from your system and away from your offices and re-count ballots, but a lot of administrators don't want to bother with ballots any more. They want to get away from paper."

That's not good enough, according to election reform activists who want to see touch screens supplemented with a voter-verifiable paper trail and want all election results, regardless of the system used, to be audited regularly.

Currently, 28 states have voterverified paper record requirements, and 13 require mandatory manual audits of those voter-verified paper records. Without a separate method of vote counting that can be double-checked, Florida's audit of the March elections in Pinellas was meaningless, says Haengel. "They keep asking, 'where's your evidence?' If votes are flipped, there will be no way for us to know that. There is a gap here. That's why independent voter verification of a ballot is so important."

In Sarasota County, voters are spearheading an effort to require a voter-verified paper trail. If their initiative passes, "we would be the only county in Florida that would have this requirement defined in our charter," says Kindra Muntz, chairwoman of the Sarasota Alliance for Fair Elections.

Miami-Dade County, meanwhile, may replace touch-screen machines with optical scanners in part because of the touch screens' high operating costs. Originally purchased for $24.5 million, that county's iVotronic machines required another $6.6 million to operate in the 2004 elections. Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Lester Sola noted in a 2005 report that "a number" of citizens had expressed a desire for a tangible, auditable paper record of votes. Optical scan systems provide that paper trail, even in the case of a complete electronic failure. With touch-screen systems, he said, the "coding, casting of ballots and tabulation" are all "inextricably intertwined."

The mechanics of creating a voter-verified paper ballot are more complicated than they may appear, opponents counter. Retrofitting touch-screen systems with printers is an expensive option riddled with what-ifs. What happens, for instance, if the printers fail or jam? Who's to say that paper ballots themselves can't be tampered with? Suppose a hand count of paper ballots disagrees with an electronic tally -- which would be considered the official vote count?

MIT professor Ted Selker has suggested that touch screens could be outfitted with an audio-feedback device, with voters wearing headphones and affirming or rejecting their vote as it's read back to them. Voting machinery expert Roy Saltman says that solution still is "not quite independent because it's coming out of the same computer." Another possibility: That a separate vendor take video or a photographic picture of what's been displayed on a DRE screen and that a set of independent reviewers in each precinct compare the sum of those ballots to the tallies reported by the computers.

Meanwhile, the push for paper continues. Citing widespread malfunctions with paperless electronic voting systems, the League of Women Voters in June adopted a resolution affirming its support for a voter-verifiable paper ballot or other paper record of a voter's intent. Former President Jimmy Carter, who monitors elections around the world under the auspices of the Carter Center in Atlanta, has also endorsed the idea of paper ballot printouts that can be audited. "There is no reason these proven techniques, used overseas and in some U.S. states, could not be used in Florida," Carter wrote in a 2004 op-ed piece.

Some, like Pasco County Supervisor of Elections Kurt Browning, suggest taking a wait-and-see approach before implementing an expensive add-on. Browning says a voter-verified paper audit trail simply isn't necessary because of all the redundancies and safeguards already built into the systems. "We believe in these systems. We know these systems to be accurate and secure. We know that they produce accurate vote totals and there's more security on touch screens than any other method out there."

While Browning believes voter-verified paper trails are inevitable, neither federal, state nor local officials appear likely to move on the issue in the near term. A bill in Congress to create a federal requirement for a voter-verified permanent paper record has garnered 203 cosponsors, including six Florida Democrats, but the bill has been bottled up in committee for several years.

In the Florida Senate, three separate bills that would have mandated paper ballot trails died this year in committee. The secretary of state's office has repeatedly deferred to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission for direction. EAC voting standards, however, are voluntary, and the agency doesn't plan to address the issue of independent voter verification until 2007.

To date, only one vendor has applied for certification by Florida to sell the voter-verified paper audit trail technology, says Roberts. She's not sure the system needs it, or that it won't create even more problems. Paper has security risks too, she says. Let the other states be the guinea pigs. "Florida's going to be in a unique position to be able to analyze how it works in this election in other states. Before we leap forward, we want to make sure we're progressing in an appropriate way and make sure we're improving an election," says Roberts.

For now, Clark says she is comfortable with her Seqouia machines. She is keeping an eye on the 28 states that now require independent paper trails. "It doesn't bother me that we're not pioneers. Let's see how this plays out this fall," says Clark.