Voters across Tompkins County are using new voting machines for the first time Tuesday for village elections.

Voters in the villages of Cayuga Heights, Groton, Dryden and Trumansburg are using the new machines as part of a $600,000 investment in elections.

After Tuesday, the machines will be used county-wide for the New York presidential primaries on April 2 and on the eight-day early voting period that precedes it.

The goal is not to change the process for voters in Tompkins County, but to improve the voter experience while utilizing up-to-date technology, county Board of Elections officials said in a press release. The new machines are quicker at processing ballots, smaller, hold more ballots and reduce the chance of paper jams, the board said.

In addition to the voter-marked paper ballots, the polling locations will also offer an ADA-compliant option that will allow for the voter to independently indicate their choices and then print a ballot for the voter to cast. Unlike the previous machines that took upwards of 30 minutes for voters to vote and cast a ballot, the new ADA-compliant machine voters will be able to vote and cast a ballot within 3-5 minutes.

County Board of Elections officials are additionally hoping that by 2025 the county can offer a “ballot-on-demand” voting procedure at all of its polling places. The goal of ballot-on-demand voting is to help the Board of Elections staff polling places be more efficient and save on the cost of unnecessary printing ballots.