Congress and state legislatures are failing to ensure that the systems that count Americans’ ballots are secure, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law contended in a news release last week. More than half of the election officials in Illinois and 27 other states it surveyed in 2016 said they need to buy new voting machines by 2020, the center noted. However, 80 percent of those officials said they did not have the entire amount of money needed.