SACRAMENTO -- California should ban the use of 15,000 touch-screen voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems from the Nov. 2 general election, an advisory panel to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley recommended Thursday.

By an 8-0 vote, the state's Voting Systems and Procedures Panel recommended that Shelley cease the use of the machines, saying that Texas-based Diebold has performed poorly in California and its machines malfunctioned in the state's March 2 primary election, turning away many voters in San Diego County.

The recommendation affects 15,000 Diebold touch-screen machines in San Diego, Solano, Kern and San Joaquin counties.

Machines made by Diebold and other manufacturers in 10 other counties are unaffected, although the panel was to consider them later in the day.

The panel's recommendation has national implications for the voting machine maker, which has also supplied machines to many counties in Maryland and Georgia. It also comes as states are gearing up to spend billions of dollars on modernized election equipment in the wake of the 2000 disputed presidential election in Florida.

If Shelley follows through with the recommendation, the affected counties would have to revert to paper ballots or older voting technology.

Diebold was disappointed and disagreed with the recommendation, said its marketing director, Mark Radke. The company will quickly write a report outlining its objections to Shelley, who has until April 30 to make a final decision.

The vote doesn't affect thousands of Diebold optical scan machines that read marked ballot cards in 17 counties. Nor does it immediately affect an earlier generation of 4,000 Diebold touch-screen machines in Alameda and Plumas counties.

In addition to the ban, panel members recommended that a secretary of state's office report released Wednesday, detailing alleged failings of Diebold in California, be forwarded to the state attorney general's office to consider civil and criminal charges against the company.

Diebold Election Systems is an affiliate of Ohio-based Diebold, Inc., a leading ATM machine maker supplying banks in North and South America.

Panel member Marc Carrel, an assistant secretary of state, said he was "disgusted" by Diebold, which has "been jerking us around." The company, he said, has disenfranchised voters in California and undermined confidence in the new and developing technology of touch-screen voting.

Local elections officials in Kern San Joaquin counties, which use Diebold's touch-screen machines were surprised by the news, saying they had experienced no problems in the March primary.

"I don't understand how they can say they didn't work well," said San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters Debbie Hench. The county bought 1,626 Diebold touch-screen machines for $5.7 million.

This decision will be a "step backward" for Kern County, said Registrar of Voters Ann Barnett, who bought 1,350 Diebold touch-screen machines for $5 million.

Regardless of what happens in California, the head of Diebold Inc. told shareholders Thursday that the company is not considering getting out of the elections business.

Chairman and CEO Walden W. O'Dell told reporters after an annual shareholders meeting that "we will help in California if we are allowed. If we are not, we won't. I think whatever goes on in California is separate from what goes on in other states. Each state will make their own decisions."

O'Dell said the North Canton, Ohio-based company remains confident the machines are safe and secure.

California panel members, however, disagreed. They cited a litany of alleged problems with Diebold in recent months, including its sale of machines to the four counties without federal and state certification, last-minute software fixes before the March election, installing uncertified software in voting machines in 17 counties and still lacking federal approval for its newest voting machines for the November election. They also expressed fears the systems are vulnerable to security breaches.

"In my view we need a clean slate with this vendor," said panel member John Mott-Smith, chief of the state's elections division. "Most of the big problems in the March election came with Diebold equipment. People did not get to vote because these things did not function and that's not acceptable."

The secretary of state's investigative report of the March 2 elections found that 573 of 1,038 polling places in San Diego County failed to open on time because Diebold voting machines malfunctioned. Voters were told to come back later or try voting at the county's elections headquarters.