Bill Laitner

Detroit Free Press

Using state-of-the-art voting machines wouldn't have changed the controversial results of Michigan's presidential election last fall, according to Detroit and state election officials.

But new digital machines unveiled Saturday — to about 1,200 volunteer supervisors of Detroit's polling sites — won't suffer the frequent breakdowns of the old machines, causing lines to back up with impatient voters, and soon will be used statewide, officials said.

"At the end of the day, we all have one goal, right? To ensure that every person that wants to vote gets to vote and we count that vote accurately," Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey told the poll workers. In an event billed as an equipment fair, Winfrey and her staff showed off the new, $4,000 voting tabulators to noisy, curious crowds of election volunteers who gathered — one group in the morning, another in the afternoon — at Wayne County Community College in downtown Detroit.

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Detroit has ordered nearly 700 of the new machines, which will cost the city between $400,000 and $600,000, Detroit Elections Director Daniel Baxter said. State funding will cover the remaining estimated cost, Baxter said, which is about $2.3 million. Detroit is among seven communities in Wayne County to get the new machines in time for the August primary election, Baxter said. Detroit's election staffers are working hard to get the volunteer supervisors trained, tested and approved on the equipment, he said.

Last fall, "we had a lot of jams" — that is, machine breakdowns — "and we had to swap out equipment, so we had voters waiting," Baxter said, adding: "We won't have that anymore."

Thanks to about $40 million in total funding from state lawmakers, Michigan voters across the state will begin seeing the new machines over the next 18 months, said Carol Pierce, an elections specialist with the Michigan Secretary of State.

"Voters will not see much, if any, change — they'll still use a pen to fill in an oval or a little rectangle," Pierce said.

Detroit election bosses have set up more intensive training than in the past, "after we found a lot of process problems" in last fall's presidential count and recount, Pierce said.

"A lot of other jurisdictions had the same problems, but Detroit is so big that it was a little more noticeable" to state inspectors who participated in the state's historic recount, she said.

The new machines' counting mechanisms and optical scanners will be more secure from tampering, be more reliable, and will store a photo image of each ballot — which could help in audits of election results, officials said Saturday. The machines come from three competing manufacturers, allowing election officials across Michigan to choose which style they prefer.

But the widely publicized, controversial problems with last fall's recounts in Detroit and other communities had nothing to do with Michigan's decision to order new machines, said James McIntosh with Election Source in Grand Rapids, a distributor of the machines chosen for Wayne County.

Michigan has been studying how new equipment could improve its voting for the last three years, McIntosh said. Still, the state Legislature's approval for funding the new machines didn't occur until after the massive meltdown of Michigan's presidential recount.

Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com