An election crisis looms: Voting machines at many polling places nationwide are out of date, according to a new report, and many states don’t have the funding to replace them.
By the 2016 election, machines in 43 states will be at least 10 years old, according to a report by Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law. Fourteen states will have machines that are at least 15 years old.
“We’re perilously close to the end of the expected life span,” said Lawrence Norden, one of the co-authors of the report released Tuesday. Norden said digital voting machines are only meant to last about 10-20 years, and many of the current generation of machines were purchased with funds from the Help America Vote Act of 2002.
“These machines are essentially computers. We don’t ask our laptops or desktops to last a decade,” he said.
It may be too late to replace the machines for 2016. But after the Presidential Commission on Election Administration issued a warning last year, the Brennan Center wanted to look into specific problems caused by older systems.
Touch screen machines that are wearing down can cause “flipped votes,” where the voter hits one name but the machine records another. Machines that break down at the polling place can cause delays and long lines.
Norden said about 500,000-700,000 people were unable to vote in 2012 election due to long lines.
“In come cases we talked to election officials that had to get antiquated devices, like outdated memory cards,” said Christopher Famighetti, the report’s co-author. “They were looking at eBay for these parts that were older, out of production and difficult to find.”
Tom Schedler, president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said state officials hope to find a long term solution — but the main concern is finding the funding. The report estimates it would take more than $1 billion to replace out-of date machines nationwide.
Although at least 31 states hope to buy new machines in the next five years, the report said officials in 22 states wouldn’t have the money to do so.
Norden and Famighetti also noted that counties with lower median incomes — likely smaller, rural areas — would be less likely to replace or fix older machines, leaving voters in those counties with a higher chance of experiencing problems on election day.
As Louisiana’s secretary of state, Schedler said he has looked into alternative voting systems, such as the use of commercial products such as iPads or Android tablets and the potential of leasing hardware to minimize new technology outpacing election needs.
“All secretaries of state are enthusiastic about this. It’s just a dollars and cents issue and it always is,” Schedler said. “The states will have to find funds to satisfy it… It’s about where you are going to put that down in the pecking order, the ability to do a good honest vote in a timely fashion.”
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