RALEIGH --The future of democracy in North Carolina will hinge on a paper wad fight.
The crumpled paper, in this case, is not the weaponry in the dispute, but the source of it.

North Carolina's elections are running on fresh machinery, 2-year-old voting mechanisms that have yet to be taken out for the performance run of a presidential election. Some of the equipment, including some machines in Mecklenburg County, has run into a jam -- paper jams, to be exact.

Elections officials have made adjustments and are contemplating more to reduce the clogs, but most contend that voters now have a system deserving of their trust. Advocates of a paper ballot say the equipment is fundamentally flawed, and the paper jams provide proof.

An electronic voting machine in Carteret County lost 4,400 votes in 2004, giving North Carolina its share of infamy that year. The disappearing votes prompted cries for a paper ballot that voters can verify, a demand from a public with vivid memories of the vote-counting controversies in Florida after the 2000 presidential election.

Next year's vote will be the first major test of the electioneering system since the disappearing votes of 2004. A presidential election guarantees a larger turnout than in intervening years, and North Carolina's races for governor and the U.S. Senate likely will push participation even higher.

State officials have worked with county leaders for four years to rid the state of a patchwork of voting systems, from electronic touch screens to refrigerator-sized lever machines to no machines in three counties. Voters instead hand-marked a paper ballot.

State elections administrators took bids from manufacturers for new machines and ultimately offered counties the choice of two. Optical scan machines scan ballots that are hand-marked by voters, and touch-screen machines show the results both on the screen and on a printer attached to the machine. The voter can see the printout but can't touch it.

Replacing all of the state's machines cost $65 million, of which federal funds covered $42 million. The additional costs, primarily in counties that chose touch-screen machines, were paid by those counties.

Paper problems

Paper ballot advocates like the optical scan machines but want to eliminate the touch-screen equipment, which is used in Mecklenburg and 20 other counties. Those counties, however, include about 40 percent of the state's voters, according to elections officials.A touch-screen machine prints on a roll of paper, akin to a cash register tape, showing voters' selections as they go through the ballot. On long ballots, that uses a lot of paper -- about 3 feet per voter. The rolls get changed by volunteer poll workers who aren't accustomed to working the machines.

That sometimes causes jams. Guilford County, one of North Carolina's most populous, reported jams in 9 percent of its machines in 2006. Mecklenburg officials estimated they had 50 or 60 jams.

"It's definitely not as reliable as your cash register tape or your ATM machine," said Joyce McCloy, founder of the N.C. Coalition for Verified Voting.

The coalition grew out of the 2004 debacle in Cartaret, and members figured prominently in hearings organized by the General Assembly the following year.

McCloy and other critics say the paper jams on the new machines mean there is no paper trail to verify the electronic recording of some votes on the machines.

"That doesn't mean you lost the votes," said Michael Dickerson. "I still have three flash memories (in the machine) of that vote being cast."

McCloy, however, counters that cases such as Carteret County, though it used a different brand of machine, still demonstrate that touch-screen technology can fail to record votes electronically. The Cartaret machine not only was misprogrammed, but local election officials ignored a warning indicator.

"If we're going to have a hotly contested race and we're going to have to go through the touch-screen counties," McCloy said, "we're going to have a problem."

Seeking votes of confidence

Ohio's secretary of state released a report in December recommending the elimination of touch-screen machines because of concerns about their reliability. Florida is shifting to optical scan machines.

N.C. elections officials caution, though, that paper ballots are easier to damage, incorrectly cast or corrupt.

Gary Bartlett, executive director of the N.C. State Board of Elections, said the state's experience is that optical scan machines indicate more discrepancies between the electronic and paper vote totals than touch-screen machines.

He said board officials believe in independent verification of how a vote is cast on a touch-screen machine and recognize that it's essential to securing voters' faith in the system.

"Today it is paper," Bartlett said. "Hopefully technology will solve issues surrounding paper where an alternative choice could be used, or a better paper solution."

Elections officials also randomly select machines and compare electronic and paper vote counts to ensure accuracy.

Bartlett's staff has worked to reduce the paper jams. The machine's manufacturer has retooled the printing function so it uses less paper per voter. That means fewer roll changes and fewer jams. Counties also are using different paper that is less affected by humidity.

State elections officials are asking the company to revamp the printers further so they show only a summary of the voter's choices at the end instead of each choice as the voter goes through the ballot.

"It's like anything else: The more you work with it, the better you get at it," said Keith Long, voting systems project manager for the state board of elections.

Voting machines

Here's the equipment that some counties in the area use for voting. Counties that use optical scan machines also may use some touch-screen machines for disabled voters and early voting.

TOUCH-SCREEN:

Mecklenburg.

OPTICAL SCAN:

Cabarrus, Catawba, Gaston, Iredell, Union.