The Allegheny County Board of Elections voted 2-1 yesterday to award a contract to California-based Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. for 2,800 electronic voting machines despite last-minute protests by activists who favored a paper ballot system.

County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, who announced Friday that he wanted the county to purchase the Sequoia machines, teamed with county Councilman John DeFazio to endorse the $11.8 million contract.

Councilman David Fawcett, an at-large member like Mr. DeFazio, voted against the contract, saying he favored an optical scan system that utilizes fill-in-the-blank ballots. He said he feared that an electronic voting machine that malfunctions could be difficult to audit, possibly causing votes to be thrown out.

"That's a problem for me," he said. "I personally would not vote for [an electronic] machine without a paper audit trail."

His comments were greeted with applause by a dozen or so people in attendance, many of whom supported an optical scan system or a variant of it that utilizes paper ballots and leaves an audit trail for verification.

But Mr. Onorato, who has authority as chief executive to make the purchase, maintained that such systems are not a "cure-all," and that at least three counties in Pennsylvania didn't like them.

He said he preferred the Sequoia machine, the AVC Advantage, because it has a "full-face," allowing voters to see the entire ballot at one time just as they can now with the lever models that have been used in the county since the 1960s.

The Sequoia machine is accessible to the disabled, a federal requirement. It comes equipped with headphones and a keypad for blind voters, and its height can be adjusted for wheelchairs.

Mr. Onorato also said the Sequoia machines can be upgraded at a cost of $2.2 million to include a "cut and drop" system that leaves a paper trail for every voter. That system, however, still has to be approved by the state Legislature and certified by the state.

The Sequoia machines face a state certification test next month. The company plans to have 2,100 of them in place in time for the May primary. Another 700 would be available by the November general election.

If the county doesn't start replacing old equipment before the May primary, it could lose millions of dollars in federal aid under the Help America Vote Act.

Supplying the machines by then could be a challenge, a company official conceded in response to a question.

"It's tight. We are up against it, no question," said Howard Cramer, Sequoia vice president of sales.

At the same time, the state Supreme Court has taken up a lawsuit against neighboring Westmoreland County, where a group of activists is arguing that a county is required under the state constitution to let voters approve any purchase of an electronic voting system. But the state argues that HAVA, a federal law, takes precedence.

If the court agrees with the activists, counties like Allegheny that use lever machines may have to put ballot questions before voters ahead of any machine purchases.

A $12 million federal grant would cover the county's purchase of the Sequoia machines, but Mr. Onorato expressed frustration with having to spend the money.

"I think this is a waste of $12 million of federal money. If it wasn't for the federal HAVA Act, we wouldn't be doing this. Our current machines are just as accurate as any of the new ones being proposed," he said.

Audrey Glickman of VotePA Allegheny County Chapter said the group won't stand in the way of the county's purchase even through some of its members spoke in favor of the optical scan system at the meeting.

"I really think it would do no good to contest it right now," she said. "We need to still support the county and we need to help the voters."