On Monday, county commissioners decided to buy new optical-scan ballot counters. They rejected a proposal for 13 additional touch-screen voting machines.

The decision led to applause from voting activists, who had questioned the touch-screen machines' reliability.

Like those in other North Carolina counties, Wake's machines were decertified last year based on new state and federal standards. Wake must buy all new machines in time for the May 2 primary.

Last week, the county's Board of Elections requested that commissioners approve using optical-scan ballots on Election Day and touch-screen machines for early voting.

They were concerned that hand-sorting the paper ballots from early voting would be cumbersome and could lead to security problems. Touch-screen machines would sort the results automatically.

Touch-screen machines, similar to ATMs, are used in Mecklenburg and Guilford counties but have never been tried in Wake.

Voting activists argued that the machines would be more expensive and less reliable. They said the touch screens' paper would not withstand the rigors of a recount.

"Why spend extra money for a dubious and experimental technology?" said Andrew Silver, 64, a Cary epidemiologist.

Commissioner Phil Jeffreys, a retired postal worker, said he was not concerned about the difficulty of hand-sorting ballots. During the 2004 election, more than 90,000 ballots were cast at early voting sites.

"I worked in a post office for 30 years, and it's not a lot [to sort]," he said.

County commissioners unanimously rejected the proposal and approved a second request from the elections board to request all optical-scan ballot counters.