Electronic voting systems used throughout California still aren't good enough to be trusted with the state's elections, Secretary of State Debra Bowen said. While Bowen has been putting tough restrictions and new security requirements on the use of the touch screen machines, she admitted having doubts as to whether the electronic voting systems will ever meet the standards she believes are needed in California. It's a real challenge," she said at a ... conference on voting and elections. What's available now isn't as transparent or auditable as the paper ballot systems they replaced. Earlier this year, Bowen put together a top-to-bottom review of voting systems used in the state and found that most of the voting machines were vulnerable to hackers looking to change results or cause mischief with the systems. Despite loud howls from county voting officials, Bowen decertified almost all the touch screen systems used in California, allowing only their most limited use. "When the government finds a car is unsafe, it orders a recall," she said. "Here we're talking about systems used to cast and tally votes, the most basic tool of democracy." The secretary admitted that she wants to see California's counties use optical scan systems in their polling places, especially because most of them already use the systems to count mail ballots. Optical scan systems, where voters mark their choices on a paper ballot that then gets inserted into a tallying machine, "are old and boring, but cheap and reliable," Bowen said, because the paper ballots make it easy to recount the ballots and ensure the accuracy of the vote. "I want to make sure the votes are secure, auditable and transparent and that every vote is counted as it was cast," she said. Although Bowen's review of the voting systems affected only California, it had a nationwide impact, because the same systems are used in many other states.