The long-running drama includes allegations of bid-rigging, voting machine companies claiming favoritism and a noncommittal secretary of state.
FILE - VotingWorks displays a precinct scanner with a voter-facing screen that collapses into a tamper-evident ballot box on wheels during the summer conference of the National Association of Secretaries of State in Baton Rouge, La., July 8, 2022. In 2018, the nation’s top homeland security and cybersecurity officials urged states to replace any remaining voting systems without a paper trail to improve security and increase public confidence. Congress allocated $805 million ahead of the 2020 election to help states pay for security upgrades, including new equipment. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton, File)
BATON ROUGE, La. — The need for Louisiana to replace its voting machines is not in dispute.
They are badly outdated — deployed in 2006, the year after Hurricane Katrina struck -- and do not produce paper ballots that are critical to ensuring election results are accurate.
What to do about them is another story.
The long-running drama includes previous allegations of bid-rigging, voting machine companies claiming favoritism and a secretary of state who is noncommittal about having a new system in place for the 2024 presidential election.
Local election clerks also worry about the influence of conspiracy theorists who have peddled unfounded claims about voting equipment and have been welcomed into the debate over new machines.
“It would be...
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