In elections news, voter rights activists in Pennsylvania have won a major court victory to safeguard against faulty electronic voting machines. A federal judge has ordered state election officials to provide emergency paper ballots if half or more electronic voting machines become inoperable at any polling site in the state. The lawsuit was filed after Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State ordered counties to provide emergency paper ballots only if every electronic voting machine breaks down. In his ruling, Judge Harvey Bartle said he saw “a real danger…a significant number of machines will malfunction.” The plaintiffs include the NAACP, the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia and Voter Action. Democracy Now! interviewed John Bonifaz of Voter Action on Friday, the day after the suit was filed.

John Bonifaz: “This lawsuit is all about making sure the people are protected when they show up at the polls on Election Day in Pennsylvania. The fact of the matter is that these electronic voting machines have a long record of breaking down, not functioning on Election Day, apart from the issues around whether or not they can be counted as being accurately counting votes. But the — and in this instance, we’re dealing with a situation of long lines; with high voter turnout combined with that, we see a potential perfect storm impacting the right to vote. When machines break down, they cause these long lines, they turn people away.”

Bonifaz says he now hopes other states will follow Pennsylvania’s lead in protecting against voter machines.