The strange case of an election tally that appears to have popped up on the Internet hours before polls closed is casting new doubts about the trustworthiness of electronic voting machines.

During San Luis Obispo County's March 2002 primary, absentee vote tallies were apparently sent to an Internet site operated by Diebold Election Systems Inc., the maker of the voting machines used in the election.

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March said he found absentee ballot totals from 57 of 164 San Luis Obispo County precincts in an easily accessible File Transfer Protocol site operated by North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold. The votes were time-stamped at 3:31 p.m. on March 5, 2002 -- more than four hours before polls closed.

By law, election officials cannot release tallies until voting is finished -- typically 8 p.m. on election day. Activists discovered the data in January.

Diebold, which won't say when the data showed up on the site, acknowledged the incident and says it is investigating how the data ended up on a public Internet site.