Your right to vote may be threatened in South Carolina.

That’s the message of a lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court in Columbia.

The defendants are the SC Election Commission, its members and Executive Director Marci Andino, The State newspaper reported.

The lawsuit was filed by Phil Leventis, a former state senator from Sumter, and Frank Heindel, a Mount Pleasant businessman who has filed numerous Freedom of Information requests on how the state’s voting machines work.

The 45-page lawsuit alleges that thousands of digital voting machines are outdated, break down, leave no paper vote trail to be audited and have “deep security flaws” that make them vulnerable to hacking.

“By failing to provide SC voters with a system that can record their votes reliably,” the Election Commission has deprived South Carolinians of their constitutional right to vote, the lawsuit says.

Lexington County Voter Registration and Elections Director Dean Creps said local machines are aging but still reliable and do the job well.

“To put everyone at ease, we have never connected our ballot tallying system or voting machines to the internet,” he said.

The system was not designed under law to produce a paper receipt, he said.

To ensure the equipment is functioning, he said, “We do a complete test of each voting machine, by precinct, to ensure accuracy.

“If there is any problem on election day, technicians are assigned to solve any machine issues.”

Andino said the Election Commission is aware of the urgent need to replace the state’s voting machines, all nearing the end of their expected 15-year life cycle. The commission already has some $10 million that can go toward the $50 million replacement cost.

“We have been trying to get funds from the General Assembly for the last six or seven years,” said Andino.

She said she wants to replace the machines by the 2020 presidential election.

The lawsuit aims to force the state to replace its touchscreen machines with new machines that have paper backup systems and are more secure from hacking. The state paid about $34.5 million in 2005 for 11,300 machines.

The lawsuit says that over the years, iVotronic voting machines have broken down multiple times - most recently in the June primary in Greenville, Horry, Marlboro and Florence counties.

Moreover, computer experts have concluded the iVotronic system “is plagued with vulnerabilities that undermine its reliability,” the lawsuit alleges.

In 2013, the Legislative Audit Council concluded that the machines were subject to breakdowns and could not produce a “voter verifiable paper audit trail.”

The lawsuit also notes the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reported in May that Russians launched cyber-attacks on at least 18 state election commissions.

Machines like those in South Carolina are “at (the) highest risk” for hacking, the suit says.

Top Trump administration officials have warned Russia will try again this year to interfere with U.S. elections.

Leventis said lawmakers would have to appropriate the money.

He said he hoped they and the commissioners will take speedy action rather than be required to by a federal judge.

Nothing is more important than a safe and reliable voting system, Leventis said. “The real foundation of state government is the elections that put people in office” who make decisions for the people.

Andino said legislators know about heightened concerns nationally surrounding voting machine integrity.

The commission is working with the FBI, SLED, Homeland Security and other agencies on security, she said.

There has been no hacking into the state’s voting machines since they were put in use in 2004, Andino said. But, she added, “It’s time to change the system.”