ATLANTA - In years past, Bob Green would show up to his voting precinct, step behind a curtain, flick small levers beside the candidates he preferred and stamp out a ballot.

It's a long way from the computer touchscreen he'll use in November.

"To me, it's easier once you learned how you use it," the Athens retiree said. "It's easier than the old toggle switches."

Like most Georgia voters, Mr. Green has gotten used to voting electronically in the past four years since the machines made their splashy statewide debut.

But even as lawmakers weigh whether to invest millions into upgrading the machines to produce a paper trail, some critics are questioning whether electronic voting is such a good idea.

Randy Evans, a Republican and the longest-serving member of the State Elections Board, recently called for a public hearing about Georgia's continued use of electronic voting machines, which have faced controversy on the national level over security issues and unflattering reviews in academic studies.

"There seems to be a consensus in the intellectual community that it is virtually impossible to create a fail-safe system, and I'm unwilling to take those kinds of risks with the outcome of elections," he said.

Mr. Evans said he is more concerned about hackers getting into the system to create disruptions than he is of votes being stolen in favor of certain candidates.

"When I originally started on the board, my reaction was that I thought we probably needed paper trails, but I thought the system itself was something we could hopefully upgrade or fix," he said. "But as the consensus of studies, intellectuals and other governments has started to emerge, it's caused me to say we need to take another look at it."

The technology has come under fire from the opposite end of the political spectrum. Former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney partially blamed her failed re-election bid this year on electronic machines, charging that they disenfranchise black voters during a speech last month in Augusta.

But officials in the secretary of state's office have pointed out the extra measures of controls and checks in Georgia's system.

"We don't have a single reported case of voter fraud in Georgia with these machines," Kathy Rogers, the director of elections for the secretary of state's office, told legislators fielding budget requests last week.

Ms. Rogers appeared to fill lawmakers in on how much it would cost to add paper ballots to the machines, a move critics say would add accountability so voters could verify their ballots.

It would take $19.5 million to add printers and software to the 25,000 Diebold machines the state bought for the 2002 elections.

The option would print out a copy of the ballot, allowing voters to see it under glass but not take it with them. The copies would be rolled into canisters and stored for nearly two years.

A Princeton University computer science professor reported this month that he and a pair of graduate students were able to hack into a Diebold electronic voting machine, and Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich recently raised the possibility of a special legislative session to debate whether to abandon the machines in that state.

Lee Perry, an Augusta physician, said it would be nice to have some type of paper confirmation of how he voted. But he said it would not be worth spending taxpayer money on.

"Maybe I take it for granted that the votes get placed appropriately," he said. "I have always assumed that when I voted using the computer, it would be counted."

The hearing in Georgia is planned for December to coincide with another public meeting to review results of the limited use of paper ballot printouts in the general election.

On Nov. 7, three precincts will try to use the paper receipts under a measure lawmakers passed this year to test the function.

Sen. Bill Stephens, R-Canton,, proposed the program to see whether the printouts coincide with the machine's recordings.

Jennifer Owens, the executive director for the League of Women Voters of Georgia, said her group will be watching the results closely even though it supports the electronic voting system.

"There's been a lot of controversy obviously on this issue nationwide, but I think it's most important for Georgia voters to focus on our system and recognize it has a lot of unique requirements in place that make it different than systems around the country that you hear and read about that people are afraid of," Ms. Owens said.

"No other state in the country has an independent auditing and testing agency like we have here in Georgia," she said.

Reach Vicky Eckenrode at (404) 681-1701 or vicky.eckenrode@morris.com.