Some states and counties are moving quickly to buy paper-based machines and others are doing nothing at all. | George Frey/Getty Images cybersecurity 5 big takeaways from POLITICO’s national survey of election offices Money is a big problem. And some election officials prefer their paperless machines.

Paperless voting machines are a glaring weakness in U.S. election infrastructure. They are dangerous, experts say, because they lack paper voting records, making them vulnerable to malfunctions or intrusions that could undetectably change votes.

With top U.S. intelligence officials predicting the return of Russian hackers in 2020, cybersecurity experts have urged state and local governments to replace their paperless machines as soon as possible.


Since March, POLITICO has been tracking their progress. The nationwide picture is mixed: Some states and counties are moving quickly to buy paper-based machines and others are doing nothing at all. Here are the five big takeaways from POLITICO’s nationwide survey:



1) Many counties don’t have enough money to upgrade



In hundreds of small counties, election officials can’t afford to buy new voting machines, however insecure their current systems are. Between schools, infrastructure, police, environmental protection and emergency services, counties have enough on their plate without having to worry about their voting machines.

The fact that these machines are used so infrequently is another reason they often slip down the list of counties’ spending priorities. It’s hard to justify buying new voting machines when there are overcrowded schools or crumbling hospitals.

“It is a huge expense for small rural counties,” said Cheri Hawkins, the clerk in Shackelford, Texas. “I would love to be able to update!”

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“We have some funding saved up,” said George County, Miss., Circuit Clerk Chad Welford, “but not enough to replace all machines.”

Congress gave states $380 million for election security improvements in 2018, some of which filtered down to their counties, but that amount didn’t match the scale of the problem. Some states used their share of the money for other types of improvements because they didn’t get enough to fully replace their voting machines. Democrats on Capitol Hill want to give states more money, while some Republicans want to wait until the government audits the existing spending.

Whether for financial or other reasons, 150 of 598 counties told POLITICO that they had no plans to replace their paperless voting machines.



2) Some county officials prefer paperless machines



There is another reason why paperless voting machines have survived as long as they have: They are easy to use.

Their adjustable font sizes and simple interfaces make them intuitive even for first-time voters, who instantly recognize the touchscreen design present in smartphones, tablets and ATMs. They are also ideal for older voters who may have trouble wielding pencils or filling in forms. Election officials love them because they tally results electronically and eliminate the need to collect, protect and store reams of paper ballots.

New Window In Texas, the 69 counties highlighted in red have no plans to replace their paperless machines or recently bought new ones.

When this familiarity and convenience is combined with many local officials’ lack of cybersecurity knowledge, it is easy to see why so many counties stick with their paperless machines. They enjoy using them and don’t see why they’re a problem.

“We are satisfied with our current paperless voting machines,” LeeAnn Jennings, the clerk of Jones County, Texas, told POLITICO.

“They are good machines with no security problems,” added Foard County, Texas, Clerk Debra Hopkins.

In Texas alone, according to POLITICO’s findings, 69 of 254 counties either have no plans to replace their paperless machines or recently bought new ones, with many counties citing convenience and familiarity as major factors in their decision.



3) Serving people with disabilities presents security challenges



One of the biggest logistical difficulties in election security is the need to accommodate voters with disabilities.

Electronic voting machines, whether paper-based or paperless, are ideal for many of these voters. They help people with visual, auditory, and mobility issues exercise their constitutional right to participate in democracy. Voters who can’t pick up pencils but can touch a screen need an electronic voting device. So do voters who can’t read screens and need to have candidate options read out loud to them. Ballot privacy requirements prohibit states from simply telling these voters to bring a friend, relative or guardian with them to help them vote.

These accessibility requirements encourage counties to keep paperless machines rather than explore alternative options, especially if they can’t afford paper-based electronic machines (which are more expensive than hand-marked paper ballots). But activism also plays a role.

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For example, one possible compromise between security and accessibility would be to buy hand-markable paper ballots for the vast majority of voters without disabilities and a handful of “ballot-marking devices” — electronic machines that produce paper records — for voters with disabilities.

Some disability-rights activists, however, passionately decry this approach, calling it a modern form of “separate but equal” discrimination. They question whether the electronic machines would receive the same level of care and maintenance as the other systems, and they argue that a hybrid approach would effectively ghettoize and stigmatize voters with disabilities by shunting them toward special machines in a highly visible way.

But this setup already exists in many counties. In some partially paperless jurisdictions that POLITICO is tracking, the only paperless machines present are there for voters with disabilities, while everyone else uses either a ballot-marking device or a hand-marked paper ballot.

Oklahoma, for example, uses both machine-scanned paper ballots and a paperless system that accommodates voters with disabilities. The state has told POLITICO that it does not plan to replace those machines.



4) Bureaucratic roadblocks get in the way



Election officials, whether at the state or county level, cannot simply decree that they will be buying new voting machines. They usually need permission and funding from their legislatures, county boards, city councils or other elected bodies. Particularly at the county level, these hurdles have impeded some officials’ progress in the time that POLITICO has spent tracking them.

Election officials in places like Wayne County, Ind., Rhea County, Tenn. and Hood County, Texas, said they were waiting for permission from their legislative bodies — alternatively called county councils or commissioners’ courts — before they could proceed.

“I have requested to start the process of budgeting for new equipment,” Jenise Miller, Hood County’s elections administrator, said in May, “but the [commissioners’] court has not seen to that as of yet.”



5) The winner of the popular (Express)Vote



As states and counties buy new paper-based voting machines, one system has already emerged as the front-runner: the ExpressVote, from Election Systems & Software, one of the three largest vendors. The ExpressVote is a ballot-marking device: Voters make their selections on a touchscreen, and when they finish, they are given a piece of paper to review and deposit in a box for later tabulation. The paper contains both a human-readable list of their choices and a barcode that election workers scan.

Many security experts have criticized the ExpressVote for relying on barcodes, which some localities use as the official record for auditing purposes. If someone hacked an ExpressVote, experts argue, that person could make the machine embed the incorrect votes in the barcode, perhaps in a way the voter could not detect.

At the time POLITICO published this story, of the 39 counties that reported selecting a new paper-based machine, 15 of them reported choosing the ExpressVote. South Carolina’s state government also bought the ExpressVote for the entire state. (Delaware chose a sister device, the ExpressVote XL, which displays an entire ballot’s worth of selections at once on a wide screen.)

The success of the ExpressVote is unsurprising. ES&S is already the largest of the three major vendors, serving 44 percent of eligible U.S. voters compared with 37 percent for Dominion Voting Systems and 11 percent for Hart InterCivic, according to a 2016 report by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

In many cases, election officials buy new equipment from their existing vendors because they feel comfortable with those relationships. Vendors may also offer better prices to existing customers than new ones.

All of these issues are likely to persist for many years. The migration to paper-based voting machines will require financial resources, educational outreach and political will.

Some jurisdictions won’t act until they face significant pressure from activists and experts, as was the case in Georgia. Others will seek out cybersecurity advice and make the replacement process a priority.

Vendor behavior also won’t change overnight. ES&S, under fire from lawmakers and security researchers, announced in June that it would stop selling paperless machines as a primary device (though it will still offer them in situations, like curbside voting, where its paper-based products won’t work). ES&S, Hart and Dominion are also considering the creation of a program that would let outside experts report flaws in their machines, after decades in which researchers said the vendors ignored or harassed them for disclosing vulnerabilities.

Paperless voting machines may have spread seemingly overnight after the 2000 election’s “hanging chads” debacle, but they won’t disappear so quickly.