Gone are the days of punch cards and tab voting machines for 42 percent of Maryland's registered voters.

Beginning with Tuesday's primary, voters in Prince George's, Montgomery, Allegany and Dorchester counties will stick a plastic card into a machine resembling an automated teller, touch the names of candidates and push the green "cast ballot" button.

Election officials are hoping it will make voting clean and easy.

"Someone said, 'It's just like my microwave,' " said Catherine O. Davis, Allegany's election director. "Someone else said, 'I've just gotten a new electric stove that's digital.' It's reminding them of other machines they've used. It's being accepted even better than I had anticipated."

Election officials have spent several months traveling to local festivals, organizations and stores to showcase the new AccuVote-TS system, manufactured by Global/Diebold Election Systems. They said voter response has been overwhelming positive.

The touch-screen ballots are the Maryland General Assembly's response to the Florida vote count controversy that stalled results from the 2000 presidential election for weeks. Last year, the legislature authorized state election officials to acquire and install an updated system that would make voting uniform statewide by 2006. Only those four counties with the most outdated systems will have the new one in place for the fall elections, at a cost of about $15 million split by the state and counties, said Linda Lamone, state elections administrator.

Voters in those counties will receive a card encoded specifically for their precinct and political party when they check in at the judges' table. When the card is inserted into the machine, a ballot appears on the touch screen. The voter touches a candidate's name or the box beside it, and the machine records the selection.

Before the ballot is submitted, voters can review their decisions.

"People love that," said Montgomery election director Margaret A. Jurgensen, whose staff has held demonstrations for more than 70,000 people since March.

Election officials said the new technology's advantages include its large, clear print -- in both English and Spanish in Montgomery and Prince George's -- and a safeguard against people voting for more candidates than allowed. The screen lights up to alert voters if they've skipped an office.

The machines also feature an audio ballot, which will allow the illiterate and the blind to vote unassisted for the first time in Maryland, officials said.

Blind voters have been particularly receptive to the change, Davis said. At one demonstration in Allegany, a blind woman explained to Davis that her husband has always had to help her vote.

"Now I can vote for someone he doesn't like," she told Davis.

The 327 machines between Allegany and Dorchester counties have been tested only during mock elections and presentations. Dorchester election director Donna E. Rahe said that some candidates there are concerned that voters' apprehension about the new technology might keep them away from polling places but that she is confident the machines will run smoothly on Election Day.

The electronic ballots were used in the spring in municipal, school board and special elections in Prince George's and Montgomery, the state's two largest jurisdictions. No problems occurred in Prince George's. In Montgomery, where leaders complained last year that the state was moving forward too quickly with untested technology, there were some rough spots during the pilot tests.

Jurgensen said those problems had nothing to do with the machinery but refused to describe the actual glitches. "We've worked through those events," she said.

Robin Downs, Prince George's election director, cautioned that lines may move a little slower at the polls, even though the four counties now have twice as many voting machines. The touch-screen machines don't show the entire ballot at once, so voters have to work through a progression of pages.

Some candidates and election officials still worry about voters' comfort level. Jurgensen said judges have been carefully trained and will be available at polling sites to answer questions. State election officials set up a Web site, http://www.mdvotes.org/, where people can practice voting with a simulation of the new system, and local officials were to mail a user's guide to all voters before the primary.