What’s happening

Last week’s national elections decided the governorship in two states, shifted legislative control in Virginia to Democrats and settled a long list of important ballot measures across the country. They also served as the first test of new electronic voting machines that have been rolled out across the country to protect the 2020 election from foreign interference.

In the wake of the disputed 2000 Bush v. Gore election, amid arguments about hanging chads and confusing butterfly ballots, Congress approved more than $3 billion to replace older voting methods with easy-to-use electronic voting machines. Cybersecurity was an afterthought at the time, which led to the current systems that rely on voting machines vulnerable to being hacked.

Many of those machines were in use when Russia targeted election systems in all 50 states as part of its effort to influence the 2016 election. Russia is expected to launch a similar campaign again in 2020. Intelligence officials fear foreign powers like China and Iran may do the same.

Why there’s debate

Concern over foreign interference has spawned a nationwide push to replace the vulnerable voting machines. More than 130,000 new machines have been purchased in precincts across the country to replace older paperless ones, many of which carry known security vulnerabilities. These old machines are particularly worrisome because they don’t create a paper backup, meaning there’s no way to know whether their results have been compromised. Despite the push from Congress to replace them, it is estimated that 16 million voters will use paperless machines in 2020. Read more

Read also: Hillary Clinton: ‘Shameful’ not to publish Russia report

Last week’s national elections decided the governorship in two states, shifted legislative control in Virginia to Democrats and settled a long list of important ballot measures across the country. They also served as the first test of new electronic voting machines that have been rolled out across the country to protect the 2020 election from foreign interference.