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High costs could keep Missouri and Kansas from updating voting equipment

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KBIA

The need to replace aging touch-screen and optical-scan election machines is looming in Kansas and Missouri.

But The Kansas City Star reports that the enormous cost of buying new election equipment has left legislators and budget officers with little appetite for the job.

Replacing all the voting machines in just Jackson and Johnson counties would cost an estimated $10 million to $20 million. That's far more than lawmakers have set aside.

Election officials say the result is that voters in the 2016 presidential election may confront old, unreliable machines. The Presidential Commission on Election Administration warned of a voting machine crisis in a report it issued nearly a year ago.

Johnson County officials have started talking about a funding mechanism, including potentially issuing bonds for equipment replacement.

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