For Brazil Voters, Machines Rule 

But Stanton and other proponents say eliminating printed voter receipts was a bad move.

"Obviously there's a cost (for paper receipts), but on some things you don't skimp," Stanton said. "If the government wants to skimp (for reasons of time and money), then they might not use them at all."

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Printers or no printers, Brazil spends less on its voting technology than the United States.

While Diebold's touch-screen voting machines cost an average of $3,000 in the United States, the urnas (which have no touch screen) cost $420 on average, according to Justica Eleitoral, the nation's electoral commission. Buying machines in large quantities lowers their cost, authorities said. The two manufacturers, Unisys and ProComp, won public bids to make the machines, a spokesman said.

Brazil, which has alternated between military dictatorships and democracy since the fall of the imperial monarchy in 1889, has a long history of election fraud. A judge in this state of cows and grains was killed for contesting the results in one local election. Pre-urnas elections were easier to rig, said Daniel Wobeto, chief of technical operations at the electoral commission in Rio Grande do Sul. "Paper ballots were stuffed in canvas pouches, and people would switch ballots from one candidate's pile and put it in another pile," he said.

First introduced in some precincts in 1996, urnas were used in all precincts in 2000. Voting officials took them on road shows, setting them up in bus and train stations and banks so Brazilians could have easy access to them.

Voters punch in digits for their candidate of choice (lists with numbers that match candidates' names are available at precincts). The name and a picture of the candidate appear after the number is punched in. Voters confirm their votes by pressing a green button.

There's no turning back once the green button has been pressed -- one of the system's drawbacks, said Wobeto.

Before elections, machine software is posted on the Internet, Wobeto said. Voting data on machines is stored on a floppy disk inserted at the back of each machine box and sealed inside with tamper-evident tape.

The machines generally inspire confidence among Brazil's multiple parties, but doing away with printed receipts unnerves some.

"For me, ideally you would have the printout as a backup," said Adel Braga, a political aide in Porto Alegre with Brazil's Partido Democratico Trabalhista (Democratic Worker's Party). Unlike other political parties, the PDT still uses paper ballots for its internal elections, and its national leader, Leonel Brizola, has criticized the electronic voting machines, saying they can be manipulated.

Wobeto said the urnas aren't flawless, but they're a leap ahead of paper balloting, which corrupt political bosses found easy to foil.

"There is no perfect solution," he said. "Every system has trade-offs."

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More stories written by Leslie M. Mira