Linda H. Lamone, Maryland's elections administrator, said at a Senate hearing Thursday that a bill to require a voter-verified paper ballot would require abandoning the state's touch-screen voting system and that a manufacturer is no longer taking contracts to provide equipment by this fall.
  
But yesterday, a salesperson for that company said it could implement a new system if the state asked for it soon. The company's spokesman also said that it has not stopped accepting contracts to set up the optical-scan system that produces paper receipts for this fall's election.

"Our position at this point is if they give us the go-ahead, we are prepared to do the job because we have already done it before," said Robb McGinnis, a regional sales manager for Nebraska-based Elections Systems and Software, which leased optical-scan voting equipment to 19 Maryland counties before the state spent $55 million on the electronic voting machines in 2003.

With optical-scan ballots, voters mark preprinted ballots and insert them into a tabulator. The state's touch-screen machines resemble automated tellers, recording votes on software.

McGinnis said the company would require some time to order and install equipment as well as to train poll workers. He said the sooner that ES&S received the order, the better.

"If they come to us in say, August, to do it, no, absolutely we cannot," he said. "But today, when they are asking us to do it today, we would say yes."

Elections officials stood by earlier testimony, in which Lamone argued that changing the system would be a catastrophe. Lamone's deputy, Ross Goldstein, said yesterday that implementing a new system is complex and would take from 18 to 24 months.

"To compress that into five months would be administratively infeasible," Goldstein said. "There's the setting up of warehouses, the testing, the security review that would have to take place. There are procedures that would have to be written and manuals that would have to be developed."

Whether the equipment is attainable is critical to a bill that would require paper receipts for the state's voting system. Some lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully for the past three years to push through bills requiring an auditable system.

Del. Elizabeth Bobo, a Democrat representing Howard County who has co-sponsored the bill requiring a paper trail, said yesterday it's not too late to initiate a new voting system for this fall. She said her staff has communicated with ES&S about a timetable and estimated costs.

"I think we can absolutely do this," she said. "I believe that [optic scanners] are so well known and so well understood from a technical point of view, if this manufacturer says they can get them to us, we can rely on having a very secure vote here in Maryland."

Computer experts and voting reform advocates have argued for years that the state's new voting machines provided by Diebold Elections Systems are unreliable, and those concerns were echoed this week when Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. said he has lost confidence in the state's ability to conduct accurate and secure elections.

Ehrlich sent a letter to the chairman of the State Board of Elections, pushing for a voter verification system and the postponement of early voting procedures, because of concern about fraud.

Though some Democrats complained that Ehrlich's letter was an election-year ploy to stir up doubt about the state's voting system, critics of the current technology argue that above issues of politics are issues of fairness and safety.

They point to disputes over the security of Diebold machines in other states, including a well-publicized hack by a computer expert in Leon County, Fla. After the incident, that county stopped using Diebold machines.

Diebold stands by Maryland's machines, calling the system the most accurate in the nation. Officials with the Ohio-based manufacturer said Maryland's encryption and security software would prevent any tampering

Bobo and other lawmakers are hoping this is the year reforms succeed.

"With all of the huge issues going on down here -- stem cells, emissions from power plants ... I think this is the most important issue because the security of our voting system is bedrock to our democracy," she said