NY Times: In Election Interference, Its What Reporters Didn't Find That Matters
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/insider/in-election-interference-its-what-reporters-didnt-find-that-matters.htmlThe most unusual of presidential elections — one marred by Russian trolls, a digital Watergate-style break-in and the winning candidate’s dire warnings of a “rigged election” — was followed by the most unusual period of acceptance. In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, government officials, the Clinton campaign, intelligence analysts, and civic and legal groups all appeared to calmly accept claims that votes had not been hacked.
I had been on the cyber beat for six years and had grown accustomed to deep, often lengthy digital forensics analyses of cyberattacks against a wide range of targets: Silicon Valley start-ups, multinational conglomerates, government agencies and our own Times breach by Chinese government hackers. In the vast majority of cases, it takes investigators months or years to discover that hackers had indeed been lurking undetected on victims’ machines.
Yet American intelligence officials were adamant in a report in January — just two months after Election Day — that vote tallies had not been hacked. This despite the broad consensus among United States intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election through an extensive disinformation and propaganda campaign, as well as the hacking of electoral databases and websites, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
My colleagues Michael Wines, Matthew Rosenberg and I set out to find out how government officials had nixed the possibility of vote hacking so readily. It was especially unclear to us given that officials at the Department of Homeland Security testified last fall that Russian hackers probed election systems in 21 states, with varying degrees of success, and that months later, a National Security Agency report found that Russian hackers had indeed successfully infiltrated VR Systems, an election service provider in eight states, including the battlegrounds North Carolina, Florida and Virginia.
As we dug more into our investigation, the more unresolved incidents we found. ..................
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Of course, in 2004 the contested Senate races had 1% more red shift than the 50 state average.
used to have the old "lever and button" type of voting machines, where you'd pull a lever - a curtain would surround you for privacy - and then you'd flip a button down on each individual election for whomever you were voting for, when you were finished you pulled the lever again, the curtain would open, the buttons all reset to their original positions, the votes were tallied in the rear of the machine by mechanical tumblers, and the next person was ready to vote. It was easy, it was deadly accurate, and it was impossible to hack.
But then........"PROGRESS"! They had to junk all of those perfectly good mechanical machines, that worked perfectly well, and buy the new and improved electronic voting machines that are simple to hack, and pretty much worthless in the democratic process.
Pure bullshit. Everything that changes does not necessarily progress! Sometimes you should just leave things alone, especially when they're working. Since that time Republicans have won nearly every close election in the United States. Gee, I wonder why? 
is my experience in the country where I reside. I was an election monitor for over 25 years back then, and we never had a problem with the machines. Not one. Some of the people, yes, we had problems with people but people - as a rule - aren't very reliable to begin with. 
The "modern" voting machine was invented in Rochester, New York, which is in Monroe County, which is where I resided for all those years. I'm not arguing your point that there were problems somewhere with these machines, but I firmly believe they were more durable and less able to be tampered with than any other design. That's just my two cents. 
A little history of early voting machines from RocWiki; The voting machine, a device designed to present a simulated ballot to voters, to register their votes, and to tally them automatically, was invented in 1848 by an English inventor named William Chamberlain, Jr., and adapted to American election practices by a Chicago inventor named Anthony C. Beranek in 1881. But the first voting machine to be manufactured and actually used in an election is a product of the fertile inventive climate of Rochester in the late 1880s.
Jacob H. Myers (1841-1920), an inventor who held numerous agricultural machinery patents and specialized in designing burglar-proof safes, drew on Chamberlain and Beranek's pioneering work to design the American Ballot Machine, which Myers revealed to the public in November, 1889.
Myers, a well-to-do Democrat, conceived his invention while following the debate over New York's adoption of the Australian secret ballot system, which election reformers believed would put an end to the notoriously corrupt election practices characteristic of New York City under Tammany Hall's leadership. Because the secret ballot compels voters to vote in secret, the reformers believed that the Australian system would put an end to vote buying. Vote buyers would be unable to see whether the voter performed his end of the bargain. But Governor David B. Hill, a Democrat, opposed the Australian ballot system. Hill knew that the election reformers harbored ill-concealed prejudices against foreign-born voters, many of whom were illiterate or were literate in a language other than English. Because the Australian system requires literacy, it would close the polls to tens of thousands of Democratic voters.
Myers designed his voting machine to accomplish two purposes. First, it would compel secret voting. Second, it would enable illiterate voters to cast their votes without assistance.
To compel secret voting, Myers designed his machine around large booth or cabinet, equipped with three self-locking doors. Once a voter entered, the entrance door locked behind him. He accomplished his vote in the voting compartment. After voting, the voter had nowhere to go but to pass through the internal door which, when it closed, prevented him from returning into the voting compartment. Closing the internal door unlocked the exit door. When the voter opened the exit door, the mechanism released the lock on the entry door, sounded a bell, and made the machine ready for the next voter.
https://rocwiki.org/Voting_machine
presents problems with all types of machinery due to it's hot, humid climate. Some of the issues you mentioned sounded like they were caused by human malfunction as well. If maintained properly, those machines would last a LONG time.
I moved to Florida in 2002 after I retired. I lasted three years and I couldn't get out of there fast enough. Back to New York. I could handle winter much easier than summer in Florida. Over 100 degrees every day, and thunder storms every afternoon. You could actually see the vegetation growing before your very eyes. There were bugs as big as the New York birds as well. No, Florida didn't agree with me, so I moved back to New York. The political climate in Florida was much different as well. Just outside of the town where I lived was a billboard sponsored by The John Birch Society. 
I didn't know they still existed! Florida was a little too "red" for my tastes. I know many people who absolutely LOVE living in Florida, so it's just a matter of tastes. But living in New York my entire life could never have prepared me for the culture shock I experienced in Florida. Peace.
If I remember correctly, they were bought when the technology for lever voting machines was new. Since the technology was introduced in the 1920s, they could have been fifty years old or more!
The invention of a practical voting machine was the preoccupation of reformers in the late 19th century. The operating features of these gear-and-lever machines followed contemporary trends in ballot design, notably the tabular layout of the blanket ballot and the private curtained booth. By the 1920s, a market for such machines had developed in the nation's urban centers.
State and local government officials justified investments in voting machines by noting the increasing length and complexity of ballots with multiple candidates and referenda, and the doubling of electorates with the enfranchisement of women.
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Automatic Voting Machine brochure
From 1898 through the early 1960s, the gear-and-lever voting machine was promoted as an ideal voting technology. Though its internal mechanism changed over the years, the machine's "three steps to vote" never changed:
Pull the handle to close the curtains of the booth.
Turn the voting levers over the names of your chosen candidates to expose the Xs.
Pull the handle back to register your vote and reopen the curtains.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/vote/votingmachine.html
The ones they used looked like the picture above.
