INSTITUTE INDEX: The urgent need for states to improve election security

Number of recommendations for securing elections from foreign cyberattack released this month by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Republican Chair Richard Burr of North Carolina and Democratic Vice Chair Mark Warner of Virginia: 6

Amount Congress included in the omnibus spending bill passed this month for improved election security, which voting-rights advocates say is probably half of what's actually needed: $380 million

Rank of this among all federal election-security expenditures since 2002, when Congress passed the landmark Help America Vote Act in response to the problems with the 2000 presidential election in Florida: 1

Once the federal Election Assistance Commission has the money in hand, days it will have to distribute the money to states (using a voting-age population-based formula) for security-related improvements such as replacing voting machines, implementing post-election audits, and providing cybersecurity training for elections officials: 45

Number of states where Russian hackers targeted election systems in 2016, including Alabama, Florida, and Texas: 21

Number of states that currently lack a paper trail for votes, among them Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina: 5

Number of states that use a combination of paper ballots and machines without a paper trail, including Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas: 9

Year in which Virginia switched to voting machines with a paper trail after officials discovered machines that were vulnerable to tampering: 2017

Number of states that require no post-election audits to verify that electronic voting systems are accurately recording and counting votes: 26

Of those no-audit states, number in the South: 8*

Rank of replacing voting machines that produce no voter-verified paper records among the most important priorities when it comes to upgrading election infrastructure, according to voting-rights advocates: 1

Date on which a widely-criticized bill to replace hackable electronic voting machines with a system using paper ballots died in Georgia, where a recent cyberattack crippled Atlanta's municipal government: 3/29/2018

Year of the Windows operating system, which Microsoft no longer supports, that Georgia currently uses for its voting machines: 2000

Amount Georgia is slated to get from the Election Assistance Commission to address security issues: $10 million

Estimated cost of replacing all of Georgia's voting machines: $35 million to over $100 million

* Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia

(Click on figure to go to source.)