Imagine you went to your basement and dusted off the laptop or mobile phone that you used in 2002. What would happen if you tried to turn it on? We don’t have to guess. Around the country this election year, people are going into storage, pulling out computers that date back to 2002 and asking us to vote on them.
Following an election meltdown of epic proportions in 2000, the federal government provided more than $2 billion to update the nation’s voting infrastructure. More than a decade later, these voting machines are approaching the end of their expected lifespans. Experts estimate that a reasonable lifespan for electronic voting machines (which are computers, running mainly on laptop technology developed in the 1990s) is in the 10- to 15-year range.
To determine the state of voting machines across the country, we interviewed more than 100 election administrators in all 50 states. We also consulted scores of public records, spoke with independent technology experts and analyzed data collected by the Verified Voting Foundation. Based on this research, we project that in November 43 states will use voting machines that are at least a decade old.
That’s a problem for three big reasons.
Breakdowns Lead to Lines, and Lost Votes
First, while no one thinks all the voting machines are going to break down simultaneously, using aging voting equipment on Election Day increases the likelihood of breakdowns. In fact, one New Mexico election official told us that before replacing her machines in 2014, as many as one in three needed to be taken out of service.
We saw the consequences in 2012. People waited in line for hours, which prevented between 500,000 and 700,000 people from casting a ballot. Voting machine problems this November could lead to more long waits and lost votes: in March, we saw thousands of voters in Arizona wait in line for hours.
