Georgia representative Hank Johnson wrote an opinion piece in The Hill recently citing the need to replace old, faulty, and fraud-prone voting machines. He has introduced legislation to assist states in paying for new systems:
My bill, the “Verifying Optimal Tools for Elections Act of 2016,” or VOTE Act would allocate more than $125 million in HAVA (Help America Vote Act) grants to assist states in replacing machines that were at least five years old in the 2012 general election. These grants would match state funding at a rate of 2 to 1.
The VOTE Act would also allocate $75 million dollars in grants to assist in training poll workers, developing new voting technologies and protecting voting machine source code.
Rep. Johnson should be applauded for his leadership in tackling the voting technology crisis.