Unless a successful legal challenge is mounted against the Secretary of State’s office by California counties, Napa County will be voting largely by paper ballot in the next election season, according to Napa County Registrar of Voters John Tuteur.

In a report to the Napa County Board of Supervisors Tuesday morning, Tuteur predicted dire consequences if Secretary of State Deborah Bowen’s Friday ban on Napa’s e-voting machines remains in effect — including the delay of the state’s presidential primary results until well after other state primaries are over.

Tuteur said he ruled out going to state representatives to try and change the rules, because he figured the Legislature had enough to do trying to pass a budget.

Tuteur also said Bowen’s “reckless and ego-driven” edict would delay certification of the state’s presidential vote tally until Inauguration Day, cost the county untold thousands of dollars more in election costs and force it to retrain its poll workers.

Tuteur stressed that he and other registrars decrying the edict have more experience with the e-voting machines than Bowen.

“Neither Secretary Bowen, with her seven months of experience, nor any secretary of state in modern times, has ever had the responsibility to design, print, deliver, receive and verify the signature on and process a single paper or electronic ballot,” he said.

Evan Goldberg, a spokesman for Bowen’s office, said Bowen stood by the results of her top-to-bottom review of electronic voting machines.

Bowen took action Friday to de-certify Napa’s election machine brand, Sequoia, and other brands used by 20 other counties in the state, including Santa Clara. Bowen hired a team of University of California researchers and hackers who infiltrated Sequoia’s systems.

But Bowen did not entirely ban Napa’s machines.

A federal law to aid disabled voters requires the county to use at least one e-voting machine per polling place so that the disabled can vote unassisted. In that case, Bowen insisted security measures like seals on equipment and chain of custody logs be kept to beef up security.

Tuteur said the machines are safe, surviving court scrutiny in a 2004 local court case and a November 2006 recount. He also said county counsels from around the state will hold a conference call on Wednesday to review their legal options. That means counties could be eyeing a lawsuit to challenge Bowen’s actions and have the courts re-certify e-voting systems.

“It could lead to litigation, but not necessarily,” said Napa County Counsel Robert Westmeyer.

The Nov. 7, 2006, elections saw long lines at the polls that in some cases caused voters to turn away. Separately, a confusing red screen popped up when voters either missed or intentionally abstained from voting on one race.

Another problem occurred when the paper rolls providing the “paper trail” ran out — the trail was a new requirement from the state at the time.

Plus, only trained technicians could change the paper, leaving many poll workers in the lurch as they waited for one of nine roving technicians to come. Adding fuel to the fire was a rush of voters between 5 and 7 p.m. that compounded all the technical issues.

Yet Tuteur said, if anything, Bowen’s edict will make it more difficult to avoid a repeat of November because it doesn’t allow poll workers to change the paper on the electronic machines.

The solution? Tuteur has been working to convince more voters to become permanent absentee voters. So far, the number of permanent absentees has gone from 19,000 in November 2006 to more than 25,000 now, with another advertising push to launch in October.

“They’re still trickling in,” Tuteur said.

As for the other problems at the polls, Tuteur cautioned that paper ballot systems are not free of trouble, and that electronic voting machines were not to blame — requirements that they have a paper trail were.

“We’ve had lines at the polls with paper (ballots), too,” he said.

State Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, criticized Tuteur for taking a defensive stance against Bowen’s findings. She said she supported Bowen’s efforts to have a top-to-bottom review of voting machines.

“It raises some huge red flags for me that they were able to hack into those machines,” Evans said. “That should be frightening for every voter in Napa. In fact, it would much more constructive to try to address what the problems are than to attack the secretary. ... My interest is that Napa County has elections that everybody has trust in and if the secretary of state has decertified election voting devices, I’m here to solve that problem.”