America's Hackable States

Paperless electronic voting machines are the weak leak in U.S. elections. They are easy to hack and, because they are paperless, they cannot be audited to see if hacking has taken place. 14 states currently use paperless electronic voting machines. Politico has been chasing up those 14 states to discover if and how they plan to replace them.

Election Security: The Scramble to Secure America's Voting Machines is a story map which shows which states in the U.S. have paperless voting machines and which states have paper-based machines. In the 2018 election 36 states used paper-based machines and 14 states used paperless voting machines. As you progress through the story map Politico highlights which of those 14 states  have since responded to the serious security issues of paperless machines by switching to paper-based machines. It also examines which states are ignoring this threat to democracy by refusing to replace their paperless machines.

Politico has identified five major steps that states must take to replace paperless based voting machines. Beneath its map it looks at the 14 states which used paperless machines in 2108 and explores how far along each state is along this five stage process. It also shows how many counties in each state have switched to paper-based machines and how many counties are still using paperless machines.