US democracy at risk due to outdated voting machines

A disturbing report has been released by the by the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law regarding the US voting system and hardware with many pleading for a solution to the ever-growing problem.

Since the hanging-chad debacle of 2000 and Florida ballots that left American voters in the lurch for 5 long weeks, relatively little has been done to update voting systems leading many to think another voting disaster is bound to occur, according to Al Jazeera.

The degree of variety in voting systems differs across the spectrum from counties still using analog modems to those that only work with Windows 2000. Some still use dot-matrix printers and those that do use touchscreen machines are finding the surfaces so degraded that votes are inaccurately reported if reported at all.

The 68 page report claims that forty-three states have counties using machines that will be at least 10 years old by Election Day 2016, and counties in 14 states will be using machines that will be more than 15 years old.

Currently, elections are run and funded primarily by counties which results in the counties with more wealth or those with more constituents seeing upgrades while the poorer, more rural counties are left in the lurch.

The Help America Vote Act was passed by Congress after the 2000 Election which gave grants across the country and sent a wave of election spending including new equipment and expensive long-term maintenance contracts.