Secretary of State Al Jaeger does not provide enough oversight for the voting machines that count North Dakota's ballots, his Democratic opponent says, a contention Jaeger dismisses as baseless.

Democrat Kristin Hedger said Wednesday that state election officials do not have access to proprietary software used in the scanners, which are supplied by an Omaha, Neb., company called Election Systems & Software.

"North Dakotans should have ownership of the software code that reads our votes," Hedger said during a news conference in Bismarck.

North Dakota's polling places use the company's M-100 scanner, which reads paper ballots that are marked by voters, and a separate machine, called the AutoMark, which is designed for use by people with disabilities. All 53 North Dakota counties used the equipment during the June primary election.

Hedger said the machines have been responsible for vote-counting errors in other states, and said they were "highly susceptible to manipulation, malfunction and technical errors." She said she was not aware of any North Dakota voting results that have been affected by alleged malfunctions.

Jaeger "has taken a hands-off and 'hope for the best' approach to ensuring the integrity of your vote count, and that's just not good enough," Hedger said.

Jaeger said he has taken a lead role in the push to upgrade voting equipment in North Dakota's counties, which was begun after a federal law - called the Help America Vote Act - was signed by President Bush in October 2002.

North Dakota law and administrative rules already lay out procedures for testing the machines before elections, Jaeger said. Both Democratic and Republican representatives are able to witness the tests.

Who owns the software is unimportant, the secretary of state said.

"That is not what we need to be concerned about," he said. "What we need to be concerned about is, does the equipment accurately count the votes?"

Vote-counting difficulties reported in other states often involve machines that store votes electronically and do not keep paper records, Jaeger said.

"With our system, if all else fails, we still have the paper ballots," he said.