The preliminary report, placed last week on the Web site of Black Box Voting, a nonprofit organization devoted to ensuring fair and impartial elections, was based on tests performed recently by software scientists that Black Box brought to Utah at the request of Emery County Clerk Bruce Funk.

Funk has been questioning the system of Diebold Election Systems for about a year. But he has been a lone voice in Utah and has operated outside legal bounds, according to Utah Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert, who reiterated his confidence in the Diebold system.

According to Black Box, the tests found that the electrical socket easily falls out of the voting machine, exposing live wires and raising the possibility of voters getting shocked. The scientists also found "security holes" in the system, which could lead to software manipulation to change the outcome of voting, and some voting machines had less memory than others, leading to speculation that some of the machines purchased as new were actually used.

"It would be like buying a new car that actually had 100,000 miles on it," said Funk.

But Herbert and Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen said the divergent memory capability found in the different machines was the result of different font versions. "These machines are new and unused," he said.

Black Box Executive Director Bev Harris said she wants Diebold to put the explanation about different fonts in writing, because she is skeptical. She said Black Box, at the very least, wants Diebold to take back the machines and fix the problems with the electrical sockets at its own expense. Black Box has not gone so far as to ask for the Diebold machines to be scrapped for this year's election. But Funk has asked his County Commission for permission to use the county's old system this fall.

Meanwhile, voting rights advocates have filed suit against elections officials in California to prevent the Diebold machines from being used in the election this year. Attorneys cite, among other things, alleged evidence that the machines could easily be tampered with, leading to voting fraud.

Diebold spokesman David Bear points to a study by the CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project that the new touch-screen voting system saved more than 1 million votes in 2004 that would have gone uncounted under the old punch-card system in 2000. He also noted statements by Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell that the new voting system used last year was "a great success."

Herbert says that Funk violated the contract between Utah and Diebold by conducting tests on the machines without Diebold or state election representatives there to verify it.

Funk has complained, however, that his concerns have been ignored and he wants to meet with the Utah Attorney General's Office.

Herbert says much of the criticism is from organizations, like Black Box, that don't like the touch-screen technology and are suspicious of Diebold, whose voting machines now are in 32 states, because of perceived ties to the Republican Party.