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At Least 21 States Have Decided Not To Update Voting Machines With Tighter Security Measures In Time For The 2020 Elections

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At least 21 states in the U.S. have either definitively said no to upgrading voting machines or are unsure if they will in time for the 2020 presidential election despite ongoing concerns of election meddling.

States such as Pennsylvania, Florida, Kansas and Kentucky have some of the oldest voting machines in the country, manufactured in 2008 or earlier, making them among the most vulnerable to security breaches, according to a report by Reuters. Yet many states have yet to make plans to upgrade their machines before the midterms, much less the presidential elections two years from now, siting lack of funding for the initiative.

Congress approved $380 million in election technology funding in March as part of President Donald Trump’s spending bill, but states have complained that it’s not nearly enough to cover new machines. Instead the funds have to be stretched thin to update voter registration databases and train polling workers, according to reports by Politico.

States have “always said they needed more than that initial tranche of money, so I’m hoping we can do more,” said Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, told Politico. Despite this, the House voted in June to cut federal election aid even more in 2019 instead focusing on improving coordinated information sharing between states and the federal government to combat security breaches and threats.

“I’d like to see more states replacing systems before 2020, but if they don’t have enough money it may well be that spending on something other than new machines is the right call,” Lawrence Norden, deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told Politico.

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