ATLANTA — As the midterm congressional primaries heat up amid fears of Russian hacking, roughly 1 in 5 Americans will cast ballots on machines that do not produce a paper record of their votes.
That worries voting and cybersecurity experts, who say lack of a hard copy makes it difficult to double-check results for signs of manipulation.
“In the current system, after the election, if people worry it has been hacked, the best officials can do is say, ‘Trust us,'” said Alex Halderman, a voting machine expert who is director of the University of Michigan’s Center for Computer Security and Society.
Georgia, which holds its primary on Tuesday, and four other states — Delaware, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina — exclusively use touchscreen machines that provide no paper records allowing voters to confirm their choices.
Such machines are also used in more than 300 counties in eight other states: Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas, according to Verified Voting, a nonprofit group focused on ensuring the accuracy of elections.
In all, about 20 percent of registered voters nationwide use machines that produce no paper record.
Many election officials in states and counties that rely on those machines say they support upgrading them but also contend they are accurate. In many jurisdictions, the multimillion-dollar cost is a hurdle.
The focus comes as states gear up for the first nationwide elections since Russian hackers targeted 21 states ahead of the 2016 presidential contest. U.S. intelligence agencies have said that there is no evidence any vote tallies were manipulated but that Russians and others are intent on interfering in American elections again.
Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a report that recommended replacing machines that don’t produce a paper record of the vote.
Some states already have taken that step or are doing so. Virginia last year banned paperless touchscreen machines two months before the state’s gubernatorial election. This year, Kentucky ordered that all new machines produce a paper trail.
Congress has allocated $380 million to help states with election security upgrades, but that is just a fraction of what would be needed to replace all paperless machines.
