The Orange County Board of County Commissioners approved an additional $1.7 million to the Supervisor of Elections’ budget.
More and more Floridians are taking advantage of early voting, and the funding increase will help the Supervisor of Elections keep up with this trend.
One big change will be switching from the county’s in-house voter registration system to one designed by VR Systems.
That company’s system is currently used by 64 of the 67 counties in Florida.
Another change is the addition of three more high speed counters to tally up the ballots.
More than half of votes in the most recent elections were cast before Election Day, and Supervisor of Elections Bill Cowles says that number is likely to increase.
“We’re anticipating that the vote by mail could be as much as 35 percent of the votes cast in the 2020 presidential election," he said.
$880,000 of the new funding will go towards the conversion process, with an additional $723,000 for new equipment and about $100,000 to replace outdated modems.