SAN DIEGO - Tuesday's county Board of Supervisors meeting drew a restive crowd, with two people ejected, while dozens of other electronic voting opponents protested recent hirings for the county's elections department.

Between 40 and 50 people showed up at the board meeting to protest the county's recent decisions to hire Deborah Seiler and Michael Vu as the county's top two elections officials, registrar and assistant registrar of voters.

The protests also included sharp criticisms of electronic voting in general, and devolved into shouts from audience members, rebukes from supervisors, and a declaration from county Chief Administrative Officer Walt Ekard that Seiler, Vu and electronic voting were here to stay.

Seiler, who most recently served as the assistant registrar of voters in Solano County, also worked as a sales representative with Ohio-based Diebold Elections Systems, and was directly involved in the company's sale of 10,200 "touch screen" election machines to San Diego County.

Protesters said Seiler had a conflict of interest because as a Diebold employee, she benefited financially from the sale of the machines to the county, and because she, as a former Diebold employee, supported a system that could rig elections.

Vu, meanwhile, resigned in February as executive director of Ohio's Cuyahoga County election board, where two elections workers were convicted of rigging a 2004 presidential election recount.

Protesters said Vu's resignation and the problems in Cuyahoga showed he was incompetent.

Vu could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Seiler, who will take over as county registrar June 4, said in a phone interview after Tuesday's protest that she hoped people would consider her entire elections career when judging her.

The 57-year-old Seiler's elections experience started in the 1970s, and she said it demonstrated a "clear dedication to voters and the process of elections administration."

Among other jobs, she spent seven years with the California secretary of state's office, eventually becoming assistant to the secretary of state for elections and political reform. She also served as a commissioner for California's Fair Political Practices Commission, worked in the private sector with Diebold and a rival, Sequoia Pacific Systems, and as an elections officer in Solano County.

Seiler said she believed that the fact she was familiar with three different types of electronic voting systems added to her elections experience.

"I'm not beholden to any of those companies," Seiler said.

Ken Simpkins, leader of a recently created local elections watchdog group, opened Tuesday's comments, telling supervisors that San Diego County had become the "laughingstock for the country for election integrity" by hiring Seiler and Vu.

Chief Administrative Officer Ekard - who has publicly defended his hirings of Seiler and Vu, and who previously characterized many anti-electronic voting critics as "conspiracy theorists" intent on undermining public confidence in elections - immediately responded to the criticisms.

Ekard said election integrity was "paramount" to him, county workers and supervisors, called electronic voting criticism "tired arguments," and defended Seiler and Vu, calling them honorable people with decades of elections experience who would ensure the integrity of the county's elections.

At a break in the meeting, Simpkins said that he and other electronic-voting opponents believe that the machines can be rigged to register "secret votes" - electronically tabulating a vote for a candidate the voter did not select while printing out the name of the voter's chosen candidate on the printed vote copy that was designed to prevent fraud.

"Mr. Ekard and his board are overseeing the implementation of a system of secret vote counting in San Diego," Simpkins alleged. "It cannot be an accident that the most controversial elections officials in the country… are here in San Diego."

Members of the audience broke into applause at the end of Simpkins' and subsequent protesters' comments, a demonstration that county officials routinely ask audience members not to do. However, board Chairman Ron Roberts chose not to admonish the audience until it was the county's turn to speak in response.

Ekard told the audience he supported the two new election officials.

"I understand that there are those of you who disagree with my hires," Ekard said. "I have heard you. I have listened to you. I disagree with you, and that's it. They will be on staff to ensure …"

At that moment, a woman in the audience shouted out, challenging Ekard.

Roberts stopped the proceedings, and asked the woman to leave, saying that county officials had politely listened to the protesters.

But then, another woman, Becky Hostetter, angrily shouted back at Roberts that county officials had indeed interrupted the public speakers, a charge that seemed not to be true unless she referred to Roberts' telling speakers when their two-minute time limits were up.

Roberts then told Hostetter to leave, which prompted her to yell even louder as she retreated.

"What you're doing is wrong," Hostetter shouted, her voice increasing in volume as she continued. "You're subverting democracy - and we won't have it!"

Ekard again tried to finish. Crowd members once again jeered, and Supervisor Pam Slater-Price lashed out.

"Excuse me please," Slater-Price said. "During the time you were speaking, we did not boo, hiss, catcall or laugh. That is very rude and totally unacceptable behavior."

Board members, meanwhile, listened only to five of the public speakers at the beginning of the meeting, choosing to trail the remainder until the end of the meeting, which concluded without incident.

Meanwhile, at the break, the audience members held a planned demonstration outside, holding up placards such as "Stop ignoring the voters of San Diego County," and "Seiler and Vu = sleaze X 2." One woman, wearing a pink "Impeach Bush and Cheney" T-shirt and a wolf mask, carried a poster-sized sign emblazoned with a quote attributed to deceased journalism icon Edward R. Murrow, "A nation of sheep soon begets a government of wolves."

Although the county of San Diego ran a relatively problem-free set of elections in November 2006 with its electronic voting machines, and most voters seemed to like the machines, electronic voting has not outgrown controversy that suggests that they could be rigged to throw elections.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, herself an electronic voting critic, has ordered a "top to bottom" $1.8 million retesting of all California electronic voting systems.

Bowen said she hoped the review could be finished by August, and that electronic systems could be decertified if they prove vulnerable to tampering.

Meanwhile, Simpkins' watchdog group has filed a complaint with Bowen's office alleging that county officials committed several crimes and wrongdoing during last November's elections.

County officials have responded to queries from Bowen's office, but no determinations have been made.

- Contact staff writer Gig Conaughton at (760) 739-6696 or gconaughton@nctimes.com.