May might be two months away, but the Hidalgo County Elections Department is already busy preparing for city and school district elections — and unpacking new voting machines.

Hidalgo County recently spent nearly $6 million on 1,246 new voting machines.

Voters will use the old machines for the last time in May and Hidalgo County will debut the new machines in November.

“I am very proud to say that we are ahead of schedule,” said Elections Administrator Yvonne Ramon. “They figured it would take us two weeks, for example, to put cages together and my staff did that in less than a week.”

While the existing touch-screen voting machines served Hidalgo County well, they’re now more than 10 years old. Replacement parts aren’t available.

“We bought these original machines in 2005,” said Information Technology Manager Michael Sosa. “It was just time for them to be replaced.”

The Elections Department plans to train county workers on the new machines first, followed by poll workers in April. Afterward, they’ll start training city and school district officials who run local elections.