Eight states to use paperless voting in 2020

At least eight states are on course to use paperless voting equipment, or machines without paper records, as the primary polling place equipment during the 2020 elections, a report published Tuesday by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice found.

The report said that around 12 percent of Americans, or about 16 million people, will vote on paperless machines in 2020 and will have no paper record of how they voted.

Many of these Americans will vote in the eight states that will use some form of paperless voting in 2020: Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kansas, Indiana, Kentucky and New Jersey.

“Experts have long warned that these machines are a security risk because they do not allow election officials or the public to confirm electronic vote totals,” the report’s authors wrote.

The report said the number of Americans expected to cast votes through paperless machines is down from 20 percent in 2016, when 14 states used some form of paperless voting machines.

Pennsylvania, Georgia and South Carolina are on course to replace all paperless voting machines by 2020, while Arkansas, Virginia and Delaware have already completed this process.

The authors wrote that more funding from Congress would allow states to replace paperless voting machines and cut down on the number of Americans expected to use them in 2020.