The State Board of Elections, it said, must supply the legislature with regular reports about purchasing new voting machines and improving campaign finance software.

Benign as the words were, the House decree was a swift karate kick to the state's top election officials.

"I don't think that the language is needed at all," protested Linda H. Lamone, administrator of the state elections board.

Born primarily from lawmakers' frustration with a new electronic filing system for their campaign treasury reports, the budget deliberations have helped expose a range of problems in the elections board's information technology systems. Some were apparent only to the several dozen people intimately involved with the state's campaign finance and elections systems. Others have been aired in the media already, and were obvious to the hundreds of citizens who discovered that their "motor voter" registration records had vanished when they tried to vote last year.

The problems have prompted the state Department of Budget and Management to dispatch five information technology workers to the elections office in Annapolis to help find solutions. And they have brought extra legislative scrutiny on the voting agency at a time when Americans are paying closer attention than ever to the way elections are run.

"This is not an invisible agency that nobody cares about or nobody notices," said Del. Cheryl C. Kagan (D-Dist. 17) of Rockville, who pushed her House Appropriations Committee colleagues to include language about the state elections board in the budget. "This is about the fundamentals of our democracy."

Nevertheless, the state Senate stripped the elections board language from the spending plan it passed Thursday, leaving the final decision to the House-Senate budget conference committee that is scheduled to begin meeting tomorrow.

Sen. Christopher Van Hollen Jr. (D-Dist. 18) of Kensington, vice chairman of the budget subcommittee with jurisdiction over the elections board, said senators wanted to wait until a special commission on voting systems issued its recommendations before deciding whether to ask the elections board for regular reports. Those recommendations came out late last week, after the Senate subcommittee voted.

A few dry sentences about a state agency issuing reports to the legislature is hardly the most engaging issue the budget conferees will debate, so it is not clear whether the language will stay or go.

But to Kagan and some of her colleagues -- and to administrators at the state elections board -- it matters a great deal.

Not needed

Lamone said the budget language is unnecessary because it calls on the elections board to come up with a plan for improving the electronic filing system -- which the board is now doing.

"It's already taken care of," she said.

Just last week, the special commission created by Glendening (D) in the wake of last year's presidential election deadlock issued recommendations for improving elections in Maryland by creating a uniform voting system in all 24 of the state's jurisdictions. But the report barely addressed the computer troubles at the agency.

The most publicized -- and the most compelling -- were the loss of an unknown number of voter registration records before the 2000 elections.

Anyone who obtains a driver's license in Maryland is offered the opportunity to register to vote and, said Tom Surock, the motor voter coordinator for the Motor Vehicle Administration, about 100,000 citizens avail themselves of this service every year.

But several voters who showed up at the polls in November discovered that they were never added to the rolls because their records somehow never made it from MVA to the elections board. The problem apparently was caused because voters who move from one county to another in Maryland are dropped from the voter rolls and then are required to re-register. Several politicians were incensed.

"Here we are in the 21st century, with all the technology available to us, and we can't even get our voter records straight," said Paul Ellington, executive director of the Maryland Republican Party, who fielded several complaints on Election Day.

Surock, Lamone and Secretary of State John T. Willis, who also helps administer the motor voter program, all said a computerized system to transfer the voter registration records from one agency to the other should begin operating in August and be fully functional in time for the 2002 elections. The practice of dropping someone who moves from one county to another from the voter rolls also will stop.

But even then, Surock admitted, there are differences between the two departments' computer systems that could create problems -- some as simple as someone listed as Joe Smith 2nd on the MVA's computer listed as Joe Smith II on the election agency's.

Officials from both departments said they are meeting to resolve these issues.

Wary localities

Meanwhile, some local elections officials are expressing skepticism about the state's new $7.2 million computer system, which is designed to put all local voting agencies on a uniform database administered by the state. It was used in four small counties last year and is coming online gradually in the larger jurisdictions over the next several months.

Marvin "Doc" Cheatham, president of the Baltimore City Board of Elections and chief of the statewide association for local elections officials, said the concept behind the local elections management system is sound.

"It's putting everyone on the same page," he said.

But Cheatham said the new database has not been adequately "road-tested" by the state agency, and that big elections agencies like Baltimore's initially will wind up running their old systems and the state's new one simultaneously -- a strain on manpower and other resources.

"I'm a little scared about LEMS," he said.

Lawmakers' plaint

But the biggest complaints legislators have thrown at the state elections board concern the agency's new electronic filing system for campaign finance reports. Beginning in 1999, candidates for state offices were required to begin filing their annual campaign finance statements electronically.

Several politicians -- and their volunteer campaign treasurers -- couldn't cope. Del. Joan B. Pitkin (D-Dist. 23) of Bowie said her longtime treasurer quit.

"It was the last straw," she said. "He thought it was just a major hassle."

Late last year, Kagan surveyed all 188 members of the General Assembly for their opinions of the new software. More than half of the 75 responses she received mentioned problems with the campaign finance system.

Some complaints were incredibly basic.

"I'm from the ghetto in East Baltimore," said Del. Clarence Davis (D-Dist. 45) of Baltimore. "People don't have computers. ... My treasurer's got a computer at work, but he can't use it [to file the campaign finance report]."

Other complaints are more complex. Some treasurers simply couldn't get the software to work properly. Others found to their dismay that the new system was not compatible to the computer databases they had been using for years, making the transfer of information impossible. Others found that the software limited their ability to list or organize information they way they wanted to, whether it was by ZIP code, donation size, union affiliation or something else.

"My treasurer is a very sophisticated mathematician," said Del. Martha S. Klima (R-Dist. 9) of Lutherville. "He's a CPA. He's been cursing the system."

Joe Shannon, campaign treasurer to Sen. Thomas M. Middleton (D-Dist. 28) of Waldorf, said the system burdens candidates and treasurers who are trying to meet deadlines and don't want to be embarrassed by late fees and other potential penalties.

"People who are really trying to be compliant are a bit terrorized," he said.

Shannon said board staffers have tried to be helpful but erred by not bringing in a group of treasurers to test the software.

"You hate to say it, but it almost to some degree may prevent people from considering public service," he said of the electronic filing requirements.

Looking for alternatives

Kagan said she pressed elections officials for a list of companies that could provide alternative software that would be compatible to the board's. Of the eight firms on the list, she said, two were out of business, two catered to Republicans only, two served political action committees exclusively, one was not in business yet, and one was prohibitively expensive.

An Anne Arundel County computer firm offering an elections software package for between $700 and $1,000 tried to get on the state board's list of alternative companies before the November campaign treasury report filing date, but was rebuffed. Now, Victory Software of Pasadena expects to be added to the list.

"I think we just caught a very busy organization at a very busy time," Ed Warren, sales manager for the firm, said diplomatically.

Lamone said the elections board is trying to make the software user-friendlier, but can't promise anything.

"Some people just can't make their computers work," she said. "There's nothing I can do about that."

Lamone said legislators passed the law requiring electronic filing and should learn to live with it.

Del. Howard P. Rawlings (D-Dist. 40) of Baltimore, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, predicted that the budget conferees ultimately will restore the language about the elections board in the budget bill.

Senators, he said, generally raise more money than delegates and have more to lose with a confusing campaign finance filing system.

But the campaign finance system has flaws for members of the public who try to access information online. Just the other day, for example, Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D) was listed as having $55,000 in the bank -- even though the true total is more than 10 times greater.

For all these reasons, Kagan is preaching more legislative vigilance over the elections agency.

"If people lose confidence in the operations of their elections," she said, "they lose confidence in their democracy."