After years of stalemate, the Shelby County Commission is poised to — once again — consider funding new voting machines for Shelby County.

Whether the plan will be approved by Shelby County commissioners is yet to be seen. They have in the past voted down a similar arrangement, voicing support for hand-marked paper ballots over ballot marking devices.

If approved, the agreement would spend $5.8 million on new machines from vendor Election Systems & Software, LLC, known as ES&S, having the equipment fully operational by the August 2022 general election. $2.4 million in those funds are reimbursable from the State of Tennessee.

“We are at risk for the election that’s coming up in August, so that’s why we’re trying to move forward with having a process by which hopefully having this new equipment will achieve the outcome that it’s intended for,” said Shelby County Commission Chairman Willie Brooks Jr.

Voters would then be able to choose at the polls between a paper ballot or an electronic ballot.

The ballot marking machines will not allow voters to overvote. They are accessible for voters with disabilities.

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The machine used to count votes can tabulate both printouts from the ballot marking machines and paper ballots that have been filled out by hand. It will also catch if someone has overvoted on a paper ballot, asking the voter if they want to move forward with casting their ballot or stop and go back.

After the ballot (both those filled out on the machine and those filled out by hand) is scanned, recorded and tabulated, it drops down into a secure ballot box.

This was proposed in February as a compromise between the paper ballots desired by the Shelby County Commission and the ballot marking devices preferred by the Shelby County Election Commission. The proposal was formed by Brooks and then-Election Commission Chairman Brent Taylor, who has since resigned to run for State Senate.

The Election Commission sued the Shelby County Commission in September 2021 after the Shelby County Commissioners twice rejected resolutions to purchase new voting machines for Shelby County.

The current machines used in Shelby County elections are 16 years old — purchased in 2006. They are at the end of their lifespan.

When the machines were installed, they had three servers. The primary server and backup have since failed, leaving them with a vintage 2006 server that sometimes randomly shuts off. If it were to shut off and not turn back on during an election, “that would be absolutely disastrous,” said Linda Phillips, administrator of elections, creating hours of work to manually transcribe results.

The machines have also been plagued with problems for voters. In some cases, people have tried to choose one candidate on the touch screen only to have another selected by the machine. In 2018, election officials had to issue magnifying glasses and paper signs telling voters not to use the "enlarge print" option after Democrat Karl Dean's name was bumped off the large print first page for gubernatorial candidates, where it should have been in accordance with state law. 

Shelby County Commissioners will first consider the plan in committee Wednesday, then may take a final vote as soon as Monday.

As to whether he’ll have enough votes to get the plan approved, Brooks simply said in a text message, “Hopefully.”

The appropriation of funds is contingent upon a settlement in the lawsuit. Phillips said that if the Shelby County Commission approves the resolution, the Election Commission will hold a meeting to withdraw the lawsuit. 

Mark Luttrell, current chairman of the Shelby County Election Commission, said he feels positive about the chance of the funding being approved by the Shelby County Commission.

"We're almost at a crisis point as far as our equipment is concerned," Luttrell said. "We know that if we don’t get it through this time, we’ll have to continue to push hard, because there’s some recent mandates from the state that we have to have all of this equipment mandated by 2024. The longer we delay, the more it’s going to cost us. We’ve got to keep that in mind as well.”

While getting the new machines in place before August is a quick timeline, Phillips said it will be worth it rather than risking using the old machines with no server backup.

“We decided that if we can get this in place by August that’s really the safer choice for the voter,” she said. “We’re ready to move forward.”

Katherine Burgess covers county government and religion. She can be reached at katherine.burgess@commercialappeal.com, 901-529-2799 or followed on Twitter @kathsburgess.