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Pima County's plan to make scanned copies of election ballots universally available online has taken a technological step forward and two legal steps back.

A Washington, D.C.-based company that has been scanning ballots and making them available on CD for years has contacted the county to offer its services, and the county's top technology adviser said the method appears secure.

But Secretary of State Jan Brewer sent the Pima County Board of Supervisors a stern letter warning them that any procedural changes would need approval from her office and possibly from the Legislature.

A spokesman for Brewer questioned why the county needs additional transparency around its elections when hand audits and other safeguards already are in place.

The Pima County Board of Supervisors earlier this month ordered county staffers to find a way to post scanned copies of ballots online the night of the election.

The decision came after a lawsuit by the Pima County Democratic Party seeking access to past election databases led a Superior Court judge to order the release of records from the 2006 primary and general election. The county agreed to release databases from the Regional Transportation Authority election as well after a tense meeting with outraged activists.

Supervisor Ramon Valadez said that would make the election transparent to anyone, not just to computer experts.

But just a day after the vote, Brewer sent a letter to the supervisors warning them not to get ahead of themselves.

"Please be advised that it is unlawful for a county to establish its own procedures for tabulating and storing votes," Brewer wrote. "Any such procedure must be promulgated by the Secretary of State . . . Consequently, Pima County may not scan and post voted ballots online."

Deputy Secretary of State Kevin Tyne said the secretary of state needs to maintain procedures that are uniform and work for all 15 counties. And he pointed to other safeguards, like the requirement of a hand audit of a few races in a few precincts.

"Not knowing what has been proposed — and I'm not sure Pima County has done their due diligence — we can't say we'd be willing to support it," Tyne said.

County officials acknowledge they have to work out the details, but they say they are not changing the way they count and store ballots. They contend an online image is not the same as storing the ballots.

And they are a little closer to a technological solution now than they were two weeks ago.

Last week, the county received a letter from True Ballot, a company that scans and counts ballots. The company has conducted private elections for unions, homeowners associations and shareholders for years and recently has worked on several municipal elections in other states.

The company will be scanning as many as 150,000 ballots for the New Mexico Democratic Party presidential preference caucus Feb. 5 and presenting the party with a CD-ROM containing images of all the ballots and databases of the tally.

True Ballot Vice President Caleb Kleppner said the company has never made ballots available online, but doing so would not be technologically difficult. The only concern would be making sure voters don't put any identifying marks on their ballots.

In a recent city election in Takoma Park, Md., the scanning of the ballots was part of the public process.

"The poll workers handed the ballots to us, and our workers held each stack for a minute or two and handed them back," Kleppner said. "It was a publicly observed process, and it's as if ballots are in the custody of the jurisdiction the whole time."

John Moffatt, a technology expert with the county, reviewed True Ballot's program and said it appears secure.

"It's certainly a technologically feasible solution," he said. "It's standard equipment."

County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said he will include information about True Ballot in a report on election security in mid-February and see how the supervisors want to proceed.

"We're not storing them, we're not counting them, but that's a legal issue that ultimately the county attorney or the attorney general will need to look at," Huckelberry said.

At the same time, the county is opposing a request by the Democratic Party that records from future elections be made available to the political parties within the window to challenge an election.

Pima County Democratic Party Chairman Vince Rabago said the party supports posting the ballots online and some volunteers with the party had even suggested it before the supervisors' vote.

But that's in addition to, not instead of, releasing electronic databases.

"We appreciate the board running with this, but we hope they will reverse position to not release future databases, especially considering that secretary of state is trying to squelch this proposal," Rabago said.

He said online ballots don't threaten the security of future elections, but they don't guarantee it either. An audit based on online images of ballots could never be used for a legal challenge.

"The actual vote is in the electronic database," he said. "And that's where the real scrutiny must appear."