NYU Study: America's Voting Machines Are Rapidly Aging Out

Presto Vivace passes on a link to a report at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU's law school which says that many of the vote-counting machines set to be used in the 2016 U.S. general election will be past their prime by the time of the election, if not long before. From the report: Technology has changed dramatically in the last decade, but America's voting machines are rapidly aging out. In 2016, for example, 43 states will use electronic voting machines that are at least 10 years old, perilously close to the end of most systems' expected lifespan. Old voting equipment increases the risk of failures and crashes — which can lead to long lines and lost votes on Election Day — and problems only get worse the longer we wait.

Comments

The first voter will take time

[houghi]

The first person at each machine at the next election will take some time, because he will be asked to update to Windows 10 first.

Re:Here's one suggestion.

[rickb928]

Let's not try to automate voting beyond OCR scanners until we can secure it. We can't now. No. We cannot.

Thanks.

Re:risk of failures and crashes

[afidel]

Or do what Ohio did after the 2004 election disaster, go to scantron style ballots. Everyone has used them, they can easily be retallied by industry standard equipment or by hand and the error rate is low. As far as reliability, schools with almost zero budget manage to keep them working through much higher workloads then a few elections a year so the equipment is obviously robust enough and the likelyhood that it will become outdated is zero.