A blind man testified at a hearing in federal court yesterday that the voting machines chosen by Allegheny County for the upcoming primary election are the worst he's tested for accessibility for disabled people.

And a lawyer who has worked on voters' rights issues in Philadelphia for decades said the county lacks enough time in the 20 days before the May 16 primary to properly educate poll workers and voters on how to use the new machines.

Both men were called to testify as part of a lawsuit filed this month seeking to block the use of the new iVotronic touch-screen voting machines.

The county agreed this month to purchase the machines for nearly $12 million, to be paid through a federal grant to comply with the Help Americans Vote Act. If they are not in place by the primary, the county faces legal action and could lose the grant.

U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster, who is holding a hearing on the matter, must decide if the primary can go on with the new machines or if the county will have to continue to use its old lever machines.

Allegheny County agreed to buy 4,700 machines from Election Systems & Software. But the company can only deliver 2,628 of them by the primary -- enough for two machines per precinct. To make up the difference, there will also be paper ballots and an optical scan machine provided.

Having too few machines, and two different ways to vote, will likely cause delays at polling places and frustration among voters, said Frederick Voigt, who served as executive director of a watchdog group in Philadelphia for 28 years.

"Voters are impatient," he said. "They don't like to wait in lines. Anything you can do to help keep it simple is the way to go."

More importantly, he said, there has not been enough time to properly train election workers.

"I think there's going to be chaos," he said.

Noel Runyan, an electrical engineer who is blind, testified as an expert witness on voting access for disabled people.

He tested the iVotronics machine in Baltimore on Monday. After he spent 45 minutes trying to vote through its audio feature, it locked up and kicked him off. Mr. Runyan was not able to successfully vote.

If given a choice, he said, he'd prefer voting on a levered machine with a sighted person helping him, rather than on the iVotronic machine.

Though the judge instructed all parties involved -- the lawsuit names the county, state and federal governments as defendants -- that he did not want to hear witnesses comparing various voting machines, that made up much of yesterday's testimony.

"It's not my role to decide if council made a bad decision," said Judge Lancaster, who is expected to rule at the hearing's conclusion on Thursday. "It's my job to decide if anyone's constitutional rights have been violated."