Election Management System (EMS) License Renewal:  Beginning in 2004, the State purchased optical scan tabulators for all cities and townships and Election Management Software (EMS) for each county.  In addition to other functions, the EMS allows the user to perform ballot layout and tabulator programming.  Counties in which M100 tabulators are used received the Unity EMS, counties in which AccuVote tabulators are used received the GEMS EMS and counties in which Optech Insight tabulators are used received the WinEDS EMS.   

EMS license fees for the first two even-numbered year election cycles that immediately followed the date that the software was delivered to the county were included in the original purchase agreement along with two additional years of "post warranty" licensing.  Licensees are entitled to receive vendor support and software upgrades throughout the coverage period.

If you took delivery of your EMS software in 2004, your State purchased license expired at the end of 2008.  If you took delivery of your EMS software in 2005, your State purchased license will expire at the end of 2010.  Based on the above, all State purchased EMS license agreements expired in 2008 or will expire at the end of 2010.   

A fee schedule which lists the "post warranty" software license fees established under the terms of the State contract is provided below. 

                                   Year 1 and 2               Year 3            Year 4          Year 5
ES&S Unity             (State purchased)              $91.00            $94.00          $97.00
(times the
number of
precincts)

                                   Year 1 and 2               Year 3            Year 4          Year 5
Premier GEMS         (State purchased)           $6,676.63       $6,676.63      $6,676.63
(per county)

                                    Year 1 and 2             Year 3            Year 4          Year 5
Sequoia WinEDS    (State purchased)             $5,000.00       $5,500.00      $6,000.00
(per county)

Individual cities and townships that opted to receive a copy of one of the three EMS products provided to the county should not be billed separately by the vendor for post warranty EMS licensing.  City and township based licenses are sub-licenses of the county; post-warranty licensing is automatically included under the post-warranty EMS license purchased by the county. 

Questions?  Please contact the Bureau of Elections at 1-800-292-5973 or Elections@Michigan.gov