Some advocates of a 2002 law mandating upgrades of the nation's voting machinery now worry the overhaul is making things worse. Proponents of the Help America Vote Act are filing lawsuits to block some state and election officials' efforts to comply with the act. The Help America Vote Act called for upgrading election equipment to guard against another contested outcome such as the 2000 presidential vote. At the time, the electronic voting machines were seen as a reliable contrast to the older technology. The lawsuits-nine so far-coincide with a stampede by state and county officials to spend $3 billion allocated by Congress to help pay for upgrades. To comply with the Help America Vote Act, a number of states and dozens of counties purchased touch-screen voting machines. The 2004 presidential campaign and some early primary elections this year have provided evidence that the machines don't always work smoothly. And several states, after experiencing problems with touch-screen electronic systems, abandoned them to return to optically scanned paper ballots, already commonly used for absentee balloting. Typically, paper ballots require a voter to use a pencil to fill in a circle. The system is less costly to buy and maintain, and provides a paper record of ballots that can be reviewed in close or disputed elections. In Indiana, an ES&S employee alerted local-election officials that another ES&S worker had installed unauthorized software on the machines before the election. That and other disputes led to a multimillion-dollar settlement.