Thanks to funding from Lansing, Cass County election officials will soon have some new tools in their hands.

The Cass County Board of Commissioners approved a grant request to State of Michigan from the county clerk/register office to purchase new election equipment, during the commissioner’s regular meeting Thursday evening in Cassopolis. Officials with the clerk’s office are requesting around $185,000 from the state, which will pay for new ballot tabulating machines for each of the county’s 25 voting precincts, as well as for other election-related hardware and software.

All of the state’s 83 counties are in the midst of selecting new equipment as part the state’s recent effort to update Michigan’s voting machines, which are more than a decade old. Lawmakers have set aside $40 million worth of federal and state dollars to give to counties to purchase the new tools.

Earlier this year, the Michigan Administrative Board selected hardware/software from three firms to provide service to state voting precincts: Dominion Voting Systems, out of Toronto, Canada; Election Systems & Software, out of Omaha, Nebraska; and Hart InterCivic, out of Austin, Texas.

In spite of several companies presenting digital-only voting machines to the state, the firms Michigan leaders chose all use paper ballots — just as the current machines used — which are inserted into tabulators that scan and record the selections made on the voting card.

“No one was comfortable with [a digital-only] option, especially with the accusations of hacking last fall,” Kennedy said. “Voters in Michigan can rest assured that, even though we have electronic tabulators, we still have paper ballots. If there are ever any problems, we can go back and count the ballots by hand.”

County officials must choose which of the three companies they want to purchase equipment from, with the state covering the cost of the machines as well as the first five years of maintenance.

Of the three firms, only Election Systems & Software and Grand Rapid’s Election Source (a supplier of Dominion Voting Systems equipment) submitted bids to Cass County. Kennedy and other local clerks had a chance to check out the equipment before making a selection, and were most impressed by the latter company’s devices due to their ease of use, she said.

Based on that, and the fact that Election Source has provided reliable maintenance services to the county in the past, Kennedy recommended to the board that the county go with the Dominion voting machines, she said.

“It was a very easy decision to make, as none of the other clerks preferred the other machine,” Kennedy said.

The new equipment offers several advantages compared to current voting equipment. The memory packs the new tabulators use to store voting information are a fraction of the size of those used in older models, and clerks can now transmit results from the machine using a secure and fast wireless network instead of requiring a slow dial-up connection through the phone line as before, Kennedy said.

On top of tabulators, the county will receive 19 upgraded ADA-compliant ballot marking devices, which allows peoples with disabilities to fill out ballots electronically. The new hardware should be much easier to use than before, Kennedy said.

The county will also get new ballot creation software, replacing its current program that no longer receives updates, Kennedy said.

While vastly improving operations behind the scenes, the changes will be virtually unnoticeable to voters once the upgrades are in place, Kennedy said.

“Voters will continue to receive a paper ballot, only instead of connecting an arrow, they will have to color in an oval next to the candidate or choice they want to vote for,” she said.

In addition to the commissioners’ vote, other Cass County municipalities will be required to approve the new equipment selection by April 14 before the purchase will be finalized, Kennedy said. Around half have approved the resolution thus far, with the others expected to do so in the coming weeks, well before the deadline, she added.

The clerk expects to have the upgraded machines in place before the November — in time for the Dowagiac general election on Nov. 7.