The Callaway County Commission has received one bid for new voting machines, which Presiding Commissioner Gary Jungermann said should be available for the 2016 elections.
Elkins-Swyers, a Springfield, Missouri-based company that provides election services, put in a bid for 28 voting machines at about $143,000, according to Jungermann. Domino Voting Systems, an international voting company, created the machines of interest.
Elkins-Swyers brought the machines the county plans to purchase to a commission meeting with County Clerk Denise Hubbard in March.
The Callaway County Clerk's Office has used voting machines from Elkins-Swyers for the past 11-12 years, Hubbard said. As the county's current machines have aged, Hubbard said, they've require more repairs, costing money for maintenance. She previously told the Fulton Sun that the piece that rolls ballots into the machine's hub causes the most problems.
With its proposal, Elkins-Swyers offered the commission two payment plans. The county could pay for the machines over a three-year period, paying 50 percent of the total the first year, 30 percent the second and 20 percent the third. Or, the commission could opt for the second option: purchasing the machines up front at a 10 percent discount. Jungermann said he thinks the commission will choose to save the 10 percent (about $14,300), but the commissioners still need to discuss the payment details.
The money could come out of two county funds - the capital improvement fund or the contingency fund, Jungermann said. The capital improvement fund contains a total of about $250,000 and the contingency fund has about $440,000, according to Jungermann.
"There's plenty of money in the 2015 budget to absorb this money," Jungermann said.
Some of the money will also come out of the county clerk's election fund.
The new machines serve two necessary functions as ballot submission boxes and touch-screen voting stations primarily utilized by those with a handicap, including the illiterate and blind. Therefore, the new machines will essentially be a two-for-one device, which Hubbard said will save the county on licensing and maintenance fees. Only one voting machine will be at each polling location in the future.
Each machine contains a memory pack that is programmed six weeks ahead of an election, Cory Nibert, a sales associate with Elkins-Swyers, said at the commission's March meeting. Although new machines will cut the county's total number of machines in half, Hubbard said two sets of memory packs will need to be bought for 2016. The state legislature previously voted to hold the presidential primary in March 2016 instead of February, which gives Callaway County only three weeks to prepare before the April 2016 election. A memory pack costs between $600-$800.
Hubbard said the county currently has 30 optical scan machines (ballot boxes) and 28 touch-screen voting systems. She added that the new machines have bigger wheels for easier transportation and covers that will protect the machines and will keep out dust.
With the new machines, ballots of handicap voters will look the same as other voters and will prevent anyone from distinguishing a handicap voter's ballot, which looks similar to a cashier receipt.
"No matter what your status is, your ballot looks no different than anyone else's," Jungermann said.
Hubbard said election judges will be trained on the new machines once they are delivered. She added that she thinks the transition will be easy.