ATLANTA (AP) — As the midterm congressional primaries heat up amid fears of Russian hacking, an estimated 1 in 5 Americans will be casting their ballots on machines that do not produce a paper record of their votes.

That worries voting and cybersecurity experts, who say the lack of a hard copy makes it difficult to double-check the results for signs of manipulation.

“In the current system, after the election, if people worry it has been hacked, the best officials can do is say ‘Trust us,'” said Alex Halderman, a voting machine expert who is director of the University of Michigan’s Center for Computer Security and Society.

Georgia, which holds its primary on Tuesday, and four other states — Delaware, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina — exclusively use touchscreen machines that provide no paper records that allow voters to confirm their choices.

Such machines are also used in more than 300 counties in eight other states: Kansas, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas, according to Verified Voting, a nonprofit group focused on ensuring the accuracy of elections.

In all, about 20 percent of registered voters nationwide use machines that produce no paper record.

Many election officials in states and counties that rely on those machines say they support upgrading them but also contend they are accurate. In many jurisdictions, the multimillion-dollar cost is a hurdle.

The focus comes as states gear up for the first nationwide elections since Russian hackers targeted 21 states ahead of the 2016 presidential contest. U.S. intelligence agencies have said that there is no evidence any vote tallies were manipulated but that Russians and others are intent on interfering in American elections again.

Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a report that recommended replacing machines that don’t produce a paper record of the vote.

Some states already have taken that step or are doing so.

Virginia last year banned paperless touchscreen machines two months before the state’s gubernatorial election. This year, Kentucky ordered that all new machines produce a paper trail.

Congress has allocated $380 million to help states with election security upgrades, but that is just a fraction of what would be needed to replace all paperless machines.

Louisiana is soliciting bids to replace the state’s nearly 10,000 such machines ahead of the 2020 election, though all the money has yet to be allocated. Funding also is an issue in Pennsylvania, where Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has ordered that counties planning to replace their electronic voting systems buy machines that leave a paper trail.

“It’s important because everybody needs to have confidence in the voting process,” Wolf said. “And given what is alleged to have happened in 2016, I think there’s some concern that maybe people aren’t as confident as they should be.”

The rest of the country uses either paper ballots that are filled out by hand and then read by an optical scanner, or a touchscreen machine that prints out a ballot so voters can verify their selections before inserting it into another machine to record their votes.

Since 2016, 46 Texas counties have upgraded their electronic machines, according to the secretary of state’s office. Of those, only 11 went to systems with a paper trail.

San Jacinto County north of Houston is among those that continued with a paperless system when it bought new touchscreen machines. County election administrator Vicki Shelly said that voters have not raised concerns and that she is confident in the new equipment.

“There’s a lot of checks and balances,” she said.

In Georgia, the cost to switch to paper-based machines in the state’s 159 counties ranges from $25 million to more than $100 million, depending on the technology adopted. The state is eligible to receive a little over $10 million from the federal government.

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp has said extensive security measures and cyber defense upgrades make the state’s current system reliable. Those measures include outside security monitoring, regular checks for system vulnerabilities and a backup of voter data that is stored in a secure location.

Amanda Strudwick, a 43-year-old nurse from Decatur, said she has to take Georgia election officials at their word.

“If somebody wants to screw it up, they can do it,” she said at an early voting center in metro Atlanta. “That does not mean opting out of voting. Too many people have fought throughout history for my right to vote.”

Concerns over Georgia’s voting machines have been prominent in the race for the state’s next election chief, with both Democratic and Republican candidates saying the equipment should be replaced.

GOP candidate Josh McKoon released a campaign video showing him taking a baseball bat to a voting machine. During a recent debate, he said close elections such as the 2017 Atlanta mayor’s race require a recount that involves paper records, not just running the tallies on the voting machines a second time.

“Having the paper ballot that can be read and verified for the voter is essential,” he said.

By MADELINE FOX

Some 20 administrators in the Kansas agency managing child welfare and state assistance have been promoted, fired or shifted to other posts since November.

Gina Meier-Hummel was tapped to take over the Department for Children and Families nearly six months ago and says now that the changes have been aimed at strengthening the agency as it confronts a rising caseload of children in care.

The agency also dismissed two staff members in the Wichita regional office earlier this spring in response to “concerning trends” in the region.

Several children have died in the Wichita region in recent years after DCF was alerted to their cases. They included: Evan Brewer, whose body was found encased in concrete in 2017; Conner Hawes, who drowned in a fish pond in his foster parents’ backyard the same year; and Anthony Bunn, who died earlier this month from injuries believed to be the result of abuse.

Meier-Hummel announced plans for a top-to-bottom review when she took over the office. Some of that is being done from outside the agency. The Annie E. Casey foundation is auditing how cases are first identified by the child welfare system.

But the secretary has also been hitting the road to see things for herself. She and her staff have taken questions and concerns at 18 of DCF’s 36 regional offices.

Meier-Hummel said staffing changes come both from a desire to reshape the overwhelmed agency and from concerns about some staff members’ actions.

“Part of it is wanting to make sure we have the right people in the right position and doing the right work,” she said. “But … as we’ve looked at other things, we’ve made changes because we do have concern or we’re worried about somebody not being ethical or somebody not being proactive enough.”

Some shifts have come from what her team has learned in local office visits, she said. The agency has also surveyed DCF employees and noted comments sent to her through an anonymous tip system. And administrative teams have reviewed each region by talking to staff and going through cases and staffing patterns.

In the meantime, the agency grapples with a staffing shortage. Last month, DCF announced it was opening up investigative child protection positions to people without a social work license. Meier-Hummel said at that time that a third of child protection positions were vacant, and some had been for more than a year.

But the secretary said she’s not letting concerns about vacancies stop her from removing staffers.

“If we think they can be coached up and supported to a level that we expect, then we’ll work with them to do that,” Meier-Hummel said. “If not, we’re not going to shy away from letting them go. We can’t be hampered by the workforce.”

DCF is also exploring new ways to be more nimble with its existing staff.

Kansas City regional director Tammy Thomas said they plan to use recently approved budget increases to pay for 12 new staff positions in the area. Some will form a “float” team that can travel from county to county based on the area’s needs.

For example, if Atchison County needs more staff to deal with a spike in welfare applicants, the team could set up there to help and later move on to Leavenworth or Wyandotte counties to handle child welfare cases.

The structure of DCF’s regional offices, though, will stay largely the same, Meier-Hummel said. She said she doesn’t plan to close any DCF offices, or open any new ones.

Madeline Fox is a reporter for the Kansas News Service. You can reach her on Twitter @maddycfox.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A man who participated in the torture and killing of a Wichita man over a $185 meth deal has been sentenced to 73 years in prison.

57-year-old Willie Morris was sentenced Friday for first-degree murder and several other charges in the November 2016 death of 33-year-old Scottie Goodpaster Jr.

Morris was one of five people charged in Goodpaster’s death.

Goodpaster’s mutilated body was found in a Harvey County field. A court affidavit indicated Goodpaster was tortured and a woman was forced to watch.

The document indicates the violence stemmed from money lost in a methamphetamine deal.

The four other defendants remain in the Sedgwick County Jail.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A former University of Kansas student has been convicted of four felonies after he hacked into the university’s computer system to change his grades.

Twenty-year-old Varun Sarja of Olathe pleaded guilty Thursday to two counts of identity theft and two counts of unlawful computer acts. Fourteen other charges were dropped.

Sarja used a keystroke logger to steal professors’ passwords to get into the computer system.

Douglas County District Court Judge Kay Huff says Sarja will likely receive probation because he has no prior criminal history.

Sarja will be required to allow law enforcement to verify that his electronics no longer contain the keystroke logger program.

Sarja was a freshman studying engineering during the 2016-17 school year when he successfully changed F grades to As.