Cities in Montague County will soon be paying more to use voting machines for elections.

The increase in price is happening after Montague County purchased new voting machines in November and wanted to get the new lease prices set before a lot of elections happen.

The lease price is set at 5 percent of the cost of the machines and that makes the increase in price rather significant. Previously it cost $59.50 to per day per machine for early voting and $119 for election day.

With a new voting machine, tabulator and poll books it will cost a total of a little more than $500 per day to rent all of those. The reason for the increased price all has to do with how the machines were paid for.

“When we purchased the previous machines back in 05, they were bought by a HAVA grant and this time the county paid for the machines. So we are just trying to recoup some of the cost we spent on the machines,” Elections Administrator Ginger Hall said.

Even though the price to lease voting machines is going up a lot, for most elections the amount cities will have to pay will not have to pay as much as it seems.

“They will split the cost,” Hall said. “The county will pay 50 percent. Then each entity it will be split. However many entities we have in that election. It will be split. So they won’t be responsible for the whole cost. It will be split between all entities.”

Because of the different cities splitting the cost of all the machines for elections, Wall said she doesn’t think any of the cities will have to hold fewer elections because of the increase of lease price.

This change in lease price will not affect the election in Nocona in may because the new prices will go into effect on July 1.