Here's the deal:
There are 2 or 3 possibilities:
1. First talk to your county legislators. If Albany says it's up to them, all you have to do is convince them paper ballots are better than vapor ballots, or even better than vapor ballots with paper printouts. You can use Bo's materials which are excellent. If Albany says it's up to the BOEs, bypassing the county legislators, then you must deal with them. I hope it's the legislators since at least they are elected and must be accountable in some way. See if by chance your county elections supervisor is elected, but I doubt it.
2. We may be able to keep our lever machines, as long as we keep permanent paper audit records of the vote totals, which we should be doing anyway! The only other HAVA requirement is for Accessible machines for the disabled, and I believe this does not go into effect until 2007. The money can be spent in 2007 for Accessible machines. They can be either the Automark, used with hand-counted or scanned paper ballots, or Accessible DREs. If they get Automarks, they can add the Op Scanners later if they want to replace lever machines. But frankly, there seems to be no need to do so. HAVA, being the scam that it is, is so poorly written, that most of us assume the levers have to go. They do not, and I have this on the word of a BOE official in our state. (And Bo Lipari witnessed it.)
3. We probably won't know the final decision from Albany until June 23 when the legislature is scheduled to adjourn. Until then, you can have your county legislature pass a Resolution for Paper Ballots/Optical Scanning. While this may not be binding, it will be on the record that this is the people's choice. If Albany lets them make a local law, that would be even better, but the Resolution would be fine for now.
Hope this helps! PM me if you wish. I spend most of my time on the 2004 Election Forum, but I'm glad I stopped by here. Been very busy with this stuff lately myself.
If you have a local branch of Democracy for America (the Dean people), they may also want to help.
Also, call Assemblywoman Sandy Galef's office to see if they know anyone in your county who might want to help.
http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/?ad=090&submit=GoShe introduced the NY paper ballot bill, but it will probably not pass.