ALBANY- As the state tried to ward off a lawsuit over its worst-in-the-nation failure to comply with the Help America Vote Act, the bottom line became clear yesterday: The lever-action voting machines used for generations will be in service again this November.

“There is no way New York State is going to be able to go forward with any kind of voting system other than continuing this year to maintain the lever machine system,” a former state assemblyman, Neil Kelleher, a cochairman of the state Board of Elections, said.

New York has made the least progress of any state in complying with HAVA, adopted after the disputed 2000 presidential election. For weeks, federal officials have threatened to sue as state officials have tried to satisfy their demands and avoid being dragged into court.

An aide to the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, said lawyers for the state and the U.S Justice Department were talking by telephone again yesterday.

“There are still intense negotiations going on,” a Spitzer spokeswoman, Christine Pritchard, said.

A Justice Department spokesman, Eric Holland, declined to comment specifically on New York’s situation, saying only that “we are communicating with various states, including New York. We’re evaluating each individual state’s situation and at the conclusion of the evaluation, we’ll determine what actions should be taken.”

A state board spokesman, Lee Daghlian, said the outlines of an agreement have been worked out, but even that might not thwart a lawsuit.

“They may want to sue anyway just to make an example of us,” he said.

On Monday, state election board commissioners quickly ended a public meeting to go behind closed doors to continue the negotiations. The board is scheduled for another public meeting March 7.