After the Florida punch-card debacle hurt the credibility of the last presidential election, ATM maker Diebold decided it should expand into electronic voting

But Diebold has yet to realize large rewards for its shift into electronic voting. Instead, it has reaped a storm of criticism and even a call for a criminal investigation by California's top election official, who banned the company's newest touchscreen voting computers April 30, citing concerns about security and reliability. The Florida fiasco also inspired Congress, which appropriated $3.9 billion for an overhaul of the nation's voting systems — one that was to be fueled by technology promised by the likes of Diebold. The Diebold ballot appears on a portable screen that voters touch and confirm, and votes are stored on memory cards. But because the machines do not produce a paper record for each vote, critics say proper recounts are impossible. Computer security experts say the Diebold machines — and those of rivals — have been carelessly developed and are too vulnerable to tampering and malfunction. Other critics have questioned the close ties that O'Dell and other company executives have with Republicans. The onslaught has slowed sales and forced the company to lower financial expectations for Diebold Election Systems, the subsidiary that makes the touchscreens. North Canton-based Diebold supplied 55,600 touchscreen voting stations for the March 2 "Super Tuesday" primaries, mostly in Maryland, Georgia and California. A competitor, Election Systems & Software of Omaha, has installed about 36,000 screens. Diebold's e-voting system was first stung by criticism last year when an unidentified hacker managed to obtain the company's software blueprints, known as source code, along with e-mails and other documents. That gave computer scientists a chance to evaluate the code and question its integrity.