CROWN POINT | Lake County elections officials are hoping for a shorter election night for those counting votes.

The county recently purchased 525 Infinity electronic voting machines at a cost of $1.4 million. The machines promise to deliver results of Tuesday's election much faster, county officials said.

Nicholas Gasparovic, assistant elections board director, said Wednesday the county has had trouble arriving at final vote totals because of compatibility issues between two types of machines previously used by the county.

The county's older MicroVote-464 didn't share data with the state-of-the art Infinity machines, requiring election workers to perform additional math steps to get a grand total.

The elections board retired the 464s earlier this year and brought in the Infinities with money from a federal grant. Gasparovic said more than 1,000 machines are in county polling places waiting to be powered up.

The county has been using electronic voting machines since 1991. It first purchased Infinity machines three years ago to comply with the Help America Vote Act, which requires polling places and equipment that can be used by physically challenged voters.