One in four registered voters in the United States live in areas that will use electronic voting machines that do not produce a paper backup in the November presidential election despite concerns that they are vulnerable to tampering and malfunctions, according to a Reuters analysis. The lack of a paper trail makes it impossible to independently verify that the aging touch-screen systems are accurate, security experts say, in a year when suspected Russian hackers have penetrated political groups and state voting systems and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said the election may be “rigged.” Election officials insist the machines are reliable, but security experts say they are riddled with bugs and security holes that can result in votes being recorded incorrectly. A Reuters analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Election Assistance Commission and the Verified Voting Foundation watchdog group found that 44 million registered voters, accounting for 25 percent of the total, live in jurisdictions that rely on paperless systems, including millions in contested states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
The picture has improved gradually since the 2008 presidential election, when 31 percent of U.S. voters lived in areas that used paperless touch-screen systems. In 2012, 27 percent lived in jurisdictions that used paperless systems. “Clearly we still have a long way to go to ensure that all Americans have access to a form of voting technology they can trust,” said Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer-science professor who has helped to uncover security flaws on touch-screen systems.
… In some states, a divide has emerged between poorer areas that continue to use paperless touch-screen systems and wealthier areas that have bought new optical scan systems that process paper ballots, which many experts say are a better way to ensure accurate elections.
In Virginia, for example, counties that still use touch-screen systems have a poverty rate of 23 percent, while those that have switched to optical-scan systems have an average poverty rate of 11 percent.
“I would have liked to have had the new machines, but the county says we don’t have the money,” said Patsy Burchett, the top election official in rural Lee County, which has been hit hard by the decline of the coal and tobacco industries and is the poorest county in the state. “These machines are on their last legs,” she said.
Full Article: Despite flaws, paperless voting machines remain widespread in U.S. | Reuters.