These issues also led to problems with absentee ballots that couldn't be easily scanned by poll workers and other difficulties with equipment, poll workers and other systems, said the report. "The less-than-rigorous conduct of the ePollBook development project and the ultimate failure of [it] on Election Day, along with ... the absentee ballot scanning problem, should be viewed in a broader context of substandard technology management within the DEC," the report said. "Given the increasing criticality of technology in conducting elections and the sensitivity of personal data in the DEC's possession, this casual approach to technology cannot be permitted to continue."

Alton Dillard, a spokesman for the DEC, said the commission "agrees with 99 percent of the report" and will take actions to resolve the problems. "The ePollBook was the chokepoint, but there are some other things that need to be addressed," he said.

The DEC meets Dec. 19 to decide how to handle next year's spring primary and off-year fall elections. Three options are under consideration, Dillard said, including the use of mailed ballots for all voters, a return to precinct voting or continuing to use voting centers while fixing or replacing the ePollBook software. Officials want to get everything fixed before the 2008 presidential election, he said.

"Right now, there's no uniformity among the [election] commissioners on which form to accept," Dillard said.

Chris Henderson, the chief operating officer for the city of Denver and a spokesman for Mayor John Hickenlooper, said the consultant's report shows that "clearly the ... technology component of the election commission is pretty broken right now. We are dismayed on a lot of levels about the troubled nature of the implementation of the [ePollBook] software. The challenge is the election commission's business to sort out those questions."