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EAST GULL LAKE - Cass County commissioners took the first steps Tuesday toward purchasing new election voting equipment.

The board authorized Auditor-Treasurer Sharon Anderson to seek requests for proposal to for new voting machines.

Anderson told the board the county's existing voting machines still tabulate votes correctly, but during the 2014 election, some of those machines were unable to transfer results electronically to the vote counting center at the courthouse in Walker.

This delayed election results collection, Anderson said.

The machines have two batteries. One can be replaced. The other cannot. Those batteries are failing now, she said. The technology of the present 1990s tabulators is obsolete, she said.

Cass County purchased the current voting machines beginning in 2002. There was state grant money available then to help with the purchase. There is no state money for that now.

Anderson recommended purchasing new machines before the 2016 election rather than waiting until 2018 as she originally planned.

Cass County Association of Townships has passed a resolution asking the county to assume all costs for storing and maintaining the new voting machines once they are purchased.

Reno Wells, township association president, said the township see a direct county levy as a more efficient way to collect property taxes for the election equipment storage and maintenance.

It still is coming from property tax levy, whether towns collect it or the county does, he said. The billing process is saved if the county taxes directly rather than through the towns, Wells said.

Currently, all townships pay a share of the $35,000 to $40,000 the county charges them to store and maintain voting equipment.

The county board referred this request to the citizen budget committee for consideration with the 2016 budget requests.

The commissioners passed a resolution asking townships to meet county standards for housing voting machines during elections.

These standards ask that the town hall or voting site have a modern electrical system, be reasonably vermin- and insect-free and the town be able to consistently recruit sufficient election judges.

Anderson said she is recommending that townships unable to meet these standards either consider going to mailed ballots or combine their election site with a neighboring township that can meet the standards.

She reported two additional townships recently decided to switch to mail balloting: Loon Lake and Thunder Lake.

Anderson also asked the county board to consider building a new climate-controlled storage area to house voting equipment. She suggested either building it as an addition to the highway department garage planned for construction at Pine River in 2016 or as a stand-alone building on highway department property at Walker.

Currently, the county pays $12,000 annual rent to store the equipment in a privately-owned building in Hackensack, plus about $1,000 per year for utilities, Anderson said. While the building is excellent for the purpose and utilities are reasonable, the county board has indicated a preference for owning buildings county uses.

The board referred Anderson's building request to the capital improvement committee for consideration in the next five-year plan update.

On other capital improvement issues, County Engineer David Enblom reported site preparation is underway adjacent to the Pine River post office building, preliminary to building a replacement county highway garage in that city next summer.

Construction this summer for a replacement county highway garage at Cass Lake is nearly complete, Enblom said. The highway department expects to move into that new building about the first week in October.

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