Brennan Center:

Nation­wide, we estim­ate that 93 percent of all votes cast during the 2020 elec­tion had a paper record, whether filled out by hand or prin­ted by a machine for the voter to review before cast­ing their ballot (based on data from Veri­fied Voting and the Elec­tion Assist­ance Commis­sion’s 2020 Elec­tion Admin­is­tra­tion and Voting Survey). The increase — up from 82 percent in 2016 — was largely due to states and local juris­dic­tions repla­cing anti­quated paper­less voting machines, often with the help of federal fund­ing. And even where states were not able to replace this equip­ment prior to the 2020 elec­tion, increased mail voting ensured that a higher share of voters were mark­ing their selec­tions on paper ballots.

The trans­ition to paper ballots should continue in upcom­ing elec­tions, as the hand­ful of states that still use paper­less voting machines work to phase out this unse­cure equip­ment. In the past year, Indi­ana, Kentucky, Missis­sippi, and Texas have all passed laws to require voting systems to produce a paper record of every vote, or moved up the dead­line for doing so. A similar bill recently passed both houses in Tennessee….

Could anything stop this progress? Perhaps. New Jersey serves as a caution­ary tale — while the state has required paper voting systems for over a decade, inad­equate fund­ing for upgrades has preven­ted counties from imple­ment­ing this require­ment. Already, some counties in states with recent paper­less voting bans are respond­ing by retro­fit­ting outdated equip­ment rather than repla­cing it with modern tech­no­logy, due to the high cost of new machines. These short­cuts raise secur­ity concerns of their own, as older equip­ment is more likely to fail, more diffi­cult to main­tain, and less likely to have the secur­ity features we expect of machines today. The Bren­nan Center and Veri­fied Voting estim­ate that it will cost about $105 million to fully replace all remain­ing paper­less voting machines nation­wide. 

At the same time, there is a move­ment in some corners to get states to adopt or expand risky inter­net voting meth­ods that fail to provide a reli­able paper trail. Lead­ing experts in cyber­se­cur­ity, computer science, and elec­tion infra­struc­ture — along with federal cyber­se­cur­ity offi­cials — continue to warn that inter­net voting presents a “signi­fic­ant secur­ity risk,” and that current tech­no­logy cannot guar­an­tee secure and reli­able online voting.