Electronic voting and increased odds of voter fraud vs. punch cards and hanging chads.

That was the topic of discussion Sunday afternoon at UC Santa Cruz’s Baskin Engineering Building. The forum was quite timely, with the Senate voting Thursday to spend $1.5 billion to implement the president’s request for improvements to the national voting system.

The 4½ -hour event featured six speakers who voiced their concerns about the various methods elections offices across the state and nation use allow their constituencies cast their votes for their favorite politician or ballot measure.

Those speakers included David Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University, and Warren Slocum, San Mateo County’s chief elections officer.