With the snip of a red ribbon, Bexar County officials on Friday formally moved the Elections Department into modern times.

The department has consolidated several scattered facilities into one glistening and spacious location near downtown. It’ll be the county’s main early voting site, where DEAFLINK and other services will be offered with all-important free parking.

The 40,573-square-foot location at 1103 S. Frio St., also the new headquarters for the county Purchasing Department, has space for training workers and a secure warehouse for thousands of voting devices and other polling-site equipment.

The county used to rent facilities — including idle movie theaters — to conduct training for deputy voter registrars and election judges. For many years the county leased a large warehouse for training and equipment storage. The new location cost more than $8 million for the land, building and fixtures.

Friday’s ribbon-cutting, led by Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff and Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen, symbolized sweeping changes for the entity that conducts elections for the county and dozens of municipalities. Merging functions into a single site, with room to grow, will make operations more efficient in coming years, the officials said.

Wolff, who took office in 2001, recalled how the county created the Elections Department to unburden the county clerk from those duties. Bexar County also made a controversial innovation that year, becoming one of the first counties in the nation to try electronic voting.

“We got off to one rocky start. We switched over to touch-screen voting … and it took us two days to count the ballots,” Wolff said.

“We were sued, we were hollered at, they said it was a conspiracy, and thank goodness Jacque came along” to improve operations, Wolff said.

Efficiencies came despite cramped working conditions at several locations, he added.

“A first-class facility is going to make a huge difference in the way elections are conducted,” Wolff said. “It’s just a major step up.”

“This has been a long time coming,” Callanen told a few dozen guests at Friday’s ceremony.

“We have struggled, but we’ve been a fantastic — if I must say so myself — Elections Department, and I want all the credit to go to my staff,” she said.

“We are going to be so much more efficient because we’ve been running back and forth between facilities,” Callanen said.

And with free parking, “you can’t get better than that,” she said.

jgonzalez@express-news.net

Twitter: @johnwgonzalez