Replacing aging U.S. voting equipment will take years and billions of dollars

A young child waits for her mom to finish voting at Phillis Wheatley Community School in New Orleans on May 15. Many voting machines in Louisiana are decades old. Kathleen Flynn/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Kathleen Flynn/Getty Images America's voting systems are getting old. Take Louisiana, for instance, where many Gen Z and Millennial voters cast primary ballots this month using machines that were older than they were . Election officials there talk about having to "cannibalize" parts from dead machines to service others. "Replacement parts are no longer manufactured," Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry told a state Senate committee earlier this year. "Simply put, the [election] system has reached the end of its life cycle." A new report out Friday shows the state is not alone in that regard. If not replaced, by the next presidential election the average age of voting equipment in the U.S. will be 9.3 years, according to research by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) and shared exclusively with NPR ahead of its release. Historically, jurisdictions replace their equipment right around that age, which could be good timing as voting machine manufacturers have just begun to offer systems that conform with the most recent federal election security guidelines . Getting counties and states to purchase machines certified to those up-to-date standards is a clear priority for President Trump, who noted the guidelines in his executive order on elections last year. …