Voting for the 2022 midterms is already underway, and the nation’s top election officials are caught fighting a two-front war: Battling disinformation stemming from the last election, while simultaneously preparing for the next one. The officials are no longer just running elections. They’ve become full-time myth-busters, contending with information threats coming from the other side of the globe — and their own ranks. In interviews with 10 state chief election officials — along with conversations with staffers, current and former local officials and other election experts — many described how they have had to refocus their positions to battle a constant rolling boil of mis- and disinformation about election processes. They’re dealing with political candidates undermining the election systems that they still run for office in, and conspiracy theories that target even the most obscure parts of America’s election infrastructure. And they say the country will face the same issues this year as it elects a new Congress and decides control of three dozen statehouses. “The biggest challenge that we face is disinformation, about the 2020 election in particular, and more generally about the election system itself,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, said in an interview. Their battle against mis- and disinformation comes at a tenuous time for American democracy, as an already diminished faith in the U.S. electoral system risks slipping further still in 2022. A recent NPR/Ipsos poll found that 64 percent of Americans believed democracy was “in crisis and at risk of failing.”
National: Replacing outdated voting equipment could cost $350M, researchers say | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop
Jurisdictions in 23 states are using voting equipment that’s more than decade old and no longer manufactured, according to a report published Tuesday by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. And equipment designed to assist voters with physical disabilities to cast private ballots is still being used in parts or all of 26 states. All told, it could cost upward of $350 million to replace all the outmoded equipment, researchers concluded. The glimpse at assistive voting machines was one part of a now-biennial report the Brennan Center conducts on the state of election infrastructure across the United States. While state and local election officials nationwide have made significant upgrades to their voting technology in recent years — fueled in large part by $380 million in federal grants awarded in 2018 and private donations from the likes of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — tens of millions of voters still reside in jurisdictions where balloting devices are aged, no longer supported by their original vendors or both, the Brennan Center found. “Machines are aging past their projected life cycle without being replaced, leaving jurisdictions with systems that are significantly more than a decade old,” the report reads. “Many of these systems are no longer manufactured, which can make it difficult or impossible to find replacement parts.” The 23 states where principal voting machines are no longer in production account for about 21 million registered voters, according to the Brennan Center. When including the states and territories where the assistive devices are also out-of-date — a group that includes Florida and New York — that figure approaches 40 million registered voters.
Full Article: Replacing outdated voting equipment could cost $350M, researchers say