What’s happening

Last week’s national elections decided the governorship in two states, shifted legislative control in Virginia to Democrats and settled a long list of important ballot measures across the country. They also served as the first test of new electronic voting machines that have been rolled out across the country to protect the 2020 election from foreign interference.

For the second straight election, an Indiana county’s voting machines were not properly registering the preferred candidate.

According to a report Tuesday in the Lafayette Journal & Courier, several Tippecanoe County machines were switching votes in Tuesday’s municipal elections.

Voter Robert Kurtz took a video of his touch screen’s failures as he tried to vote for three at-large seats on the West Lafayette City Council.

State officials have confirmed at least three reports of voting machines in two counties changing voters’ picks in Mississippi’s GOP gubernatorial primary runoff.

Former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Waller and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves are currently in a runoff for the Republican nomination in the governor’s race to see who will take on Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood in the November general election. Reeves led Waller in the Aug. 6 balloting by a 49-33 margin, though the race went to a runoff after no candidate hit 50 percent.

Georgia voters could soon get new electronic touchscreen voting machines that print a paper ballot under fast-moving legislation approved Thursday by a House subcommittee and then by the full committee.

The full committee vote split 13 to 6 along party lines, with Republicans in support.

Nearly seven hours of public testimony preceding the votes was at times raucous, with a packed room of citizens and activists often cheering or hissing at speakers, and the chairman pausing proceedings several times.

Pennsylvania’s elected auditor said Friday that officials in 18 of the state’s 67 counties reported accepting gifts, meals or trips from firms competing to sell or lease new voting machines ahead of the 2020 elections.

Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said accepting the gifts is wrong, even though it’s a legal practice and officials may have taken no action in return.

“Anyone who took them, period, could be swayed by the perks,” he said. Public officials, he said, should not “accept this nonsense.”

New voting systems are coming, but not as soon as you'd like.

In a little-noticed 6-3 vote today, the House Administration Committee voted along party lines to eliminate the Election Assistance Commission, which helps states run elections and is the only federal agency charged with making sure voting machines can’t be hacked. The EAC was created after the disastrous 2000 election in Florida as part of the Help America Vote Act to rectify problems like butterfly ballots and hanging chads.

Originally developed in the 1970s, direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines have become increasingly used nationwide. After the 2000 US presidential election's troubles with "pregnant” and "hanging” chads and the subsequent passage of the 2002 Help America Vote Act which swelled use of DREs, electronic voting technology became widely debated.