SAN DIEGO -- About 100 people gathered Wednesday night at the county Office of Education to listen to celebrities, including actor Ed Asner, nationally known sportscaster Jim Lampley, and voter activists, including "Black Box Voting" founder Bev Harris, lambaste electronic voting and lobby for people to demand paper ballots on Nov. 7.

Asner, Lampley, Harris and six other voter activists from across the United States held what was billed as an "emergency town hall election forum" at county offices weeks before an election in which San Diego County voters will use "touch-screen" voting machines en masse for the first time since 2004.

Asner, who became famous as the curmudgeonly newsroom editor Lou Grant on the "Mary Tyler Moore Show," urged people to call San Diego elections officers to give them paper ballots.

Asner said people had two weeks left to "yammer and hammer at them to be sure you can find a paper ballot at the poll when you get there." Alameda and Riverside counties, and other parts of the country, such as Georgia, have successfully used electronic voting machines for years. And many elections officials, including San Diego County Registrar Mikel Haas, say the machines pose no threat to the election process.

But Harris and many of the other presenters said repeatedly Wednesday that they believe electronic voting machines -- especially Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, the company that built San Diego County's machines -- threaten election integrity because they could be susceptible to rigging or tampering.

A number of presenters also railed against the outcomes of a number of recent elections won by Republican candidates, including victories for President Bush over Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, and San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders' triumph over councilwoman Donna Frye in 2005. Lampley, in particular, said he was convinced that Bush and Republican operatives "stole" the elections in 2000 and 2004.

In 2000, disputed ballot counts in Florida led to Supreme Court challenges and disputes over hanging chads on now-banned punch-card ballots.

Lampley said that in the 2004 elections, pre-election polling clearly showed that Kerry was leading Bush, and that he believed Diebold electronic voting machines were rigged, allowing Bush to win. Lampley said anyone who believed that electronic machines could not be rigged was "hopelessly na've." Elections officials have tried to quell electronic voting concerns by requiring them to be able to print "verifiable" paper trails.

"If a paper record comes out of a Diebold machine, I don't trust it," Lampley said before the town hall meeting.

Like other presenters, Lampley said if voters didn't demand paper ballots, they couldn't be sure that their votes would count.

Meanwhile, Haas and other county leaders said they hope that a successful, massive deployment of their touch-screen electronic voting machines in November will end a more than two-year drama that has surrounded the machines. San Diego County's machines have been certified by California's secretary of state, and they were used successfully on a limited basis in April and June elections.

Haas said Wednesday afternoon that the county also plans to have "adequate numbers" of paper ballots available at polling places Nov. 7 as backups, but would not say how many.

Electronic-voting skeptics, meanwhile, like those at Wednesday's town hall meeting, remain unconvinced that the machines are safe.

A number of private and government studies have found weaknesses in machines. But electronic voting proponents say those laboratory type attacks would not be able to be duplicated in actual voting situations at polls.

In December 2003, San Diego County supervisors voted over the objections of a dozen or so public speakers to spend $31 million -- most of which was state and federal money -- to buy 10,200 touch-screen machines from Diebold Systems.

In 2004, former California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley conditionally certified the machines, and the county used them in full force in the March 2004 primaries. But electronic glitches caused 36 percent of the county's polls to open late and prevented an unknown number of voters from casting ballots.

The machines did not malfunction. A power drain caused poll workers to be shown an unfamiliar computer screen. That stopped them from programming the smart cards that voters needed to use the touch-screen machines.

Shelley subsequently blamed county registrars for forcing him to use the machines before he should have. He banned their use in November 2004 and said they couldn't be used again until they contained verifiable paper trails. Haas said recently that the machines worked flawlessly in the April and June elections. Single touch-screen machines were placed at each of the county's 1,600-plus precincts for disabled voters in those elections.

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