Between 2014 and 2022, the Brennan Center and Verified Voting released a series of analyses detailing the problem of aging voting equipment in the United States. These analyses rely on data provided by Verified Voting, which has been tracking voting equipment usage since 2006. This update examines the state of the nation’s voting systems ahead of the November 2024 elections.
When we first
reviewed the status of voting equipment nearly a decade ago, we found that almost a quarter of all Election Day voters in 2016 would cast their votes on machines that did not produce a paper backup of their vote. Election experts consider a paper backup to be a critical security measure to ensure that ballots are counted as the voter intended. By 2024, that number has dropped dramatically,
with only three states likely to still use paperless voting equipment in 2024. Indeed, we estimate that in the upcoming presidential election, nearly 99 percent of all registered voters will live in jurisdictions where they can cast a ballot with a paper record of the vote, including 100 percent of voters who will cast ballots in battleground states.