When Dina Titus submitted a bill draft request recently to audit the state's electronic voting system, some lobbyists thought she was trying to see if she really lost the governor's race fair and square. But Titus, the Senate minority leader, says she is only holding the bill spot for the Democrat who preceded her in the party's top ballot slot in 2002.

Joe Neal, who once held the distinction of being the longest-serving senator in state history, has not exactly gone quietly into retirement.

He made an unsuccessful run at a County Commission seat two years ago and has continued to monitor issues he's interested in from his North Las Vegas home. That's how he came across Bev Harris' Black Box Voting, an organization founded to offer consumer protection to voters. Harris is featured in HBO's "Hacking Democracy," which suggests the privatization of electronic voting machine software leaves it open to manipulation.

This fell right into Neal's agenda. After all, this was a senator who worried about the accuracy of police radar guns and begged for a moratorium on capital punishment because of his concern that innocent people might be on death row here.

He thinks the Legislature has ignored its constitutional duty to maintain the integrity of the vote in the state. "We have outsourced this to the point where we don't control it," Neal said. "Nobody has ever even had a chance to question the software in this state. ... I thought maybe we could open it up and audit that process."

Titus, D-Las Vegas, said she submitted the draft request as a favor to Neal. She said she has no concerns about the integrity of the vote in this year's governor's race but agrees more scrutiny should be paid to the procedure and security of the system here. "We only keep records for 22 months," Titus said. "So, if there's a problem, it'd be hard to go back and check."

Neal said his research led to further concerns about the ownership of the two main companies that supply machines to the states. Nevada uses Sequoia Voting Systems machines with voter verifiable receipts. The printout allows a voter to verify that the machine is printing the same choices the voter pushed on the touch-button screen. But the company was sold last year to Smartmatic, which provides the voting machines in Venezuela, whose president, Hugo Chavez, has called President Bush "the devil."

A competing company, Diebold Election Systems, whose corporate boss Wally O'Dell, has close ties to President Bush, is also under scrutiny.

"A private company owns your voting," Neal says, "And no one in the state really knows if it's secure."

Neal said he first worried about vote integrity back in 2000, when he faced a primary election challenge from casino-backed political upstart Uri Clinton. Neal said he met with Clark County Registrar Larry Lomax before the vote because he wanted to make sure that, "If I lose, I don't want it to be because someone stole it from me."

Lomax explained how the actual cards with the vote record are transported to the election warehouse after the vote.

"I thought then that something could go wrong here," Neal said. "Have we outsourced it to the point where we don't control it?"

Neal had to beat Clinton in the primary by getting 50 percent of the vote, plus one, to avoid having to face him again in the general, where Clinton's casino money was expected to take out the veteran lawmaker. Neal got his magic number with five votes to spare.

So it's no wonder he thinks about the integrity of the vote from each one of those machines.

Neal was known as the lone populist and a true maverick in Carson City. He led a veritable one-man campaign to raise the state's gaming tax; supported allowing the water authority to take over Nevada Power; and, as a candidate for governor, stumped for universal health care.

And in his 32 years in office, few could tell him what to do with policy or politics.

He infuriated Democrats by backing black Republican Lynette Boggs McDonald in her race against Rep. Shelley Berkley in 2002. He later challenged national Democratic official Yvonne Atkinson Gates for her County Commission seat, lost in the primary and rode off to the Elks Lodge wearing his signature white cowboy hat.

Neal's proposed audit of electronic voting will undoubtedly get a hearing thanks to Titus carrying the measure. He also plans to meet with Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, about his proposal.

Titus said she's "interested in hearing more about it."

Anyone who votes should be.

-- -- --

After suggesting last week that a moderate of Tom Vilsack's ilk is the right kind of Democrat to put forward in a general election, a post on a liberal blog suggested I should be "euthanized."

Instead, the party seems bent on putting its 2008 hopes to sleep with either the unstoppable Hillary Clinton or unproven Barack Obama.

Hillary made her first real foray into Nevada's presidential caucus last Wednesday when she started making calls to test how she'll run here -- and where she'll get her volunteers and support. The Obama buzz apparently has led Clinton to step up her outreach to Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire, the first three states with a caucus or primary in 2008.

So Clinton called Titus.

For her sake, I hope her phone list here from the days when hubby won twice is a lot longer.

Erin Neff's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 387-2906, or by e-mail at eneff@reviewjournal.com.