Reply #1: Still have Danaher in my county.

[MH1]

I don't know about the situation with the elderly - why do they like Hillary anyway? I haven't gotten into too many of those discussions. Lately my time has been taken up with work (my boss who is from India LOVES Hillary - I do understand that one!), a local environmental committee (partisan political discussions would get in the way of getting actual work done), and another local group who are all pretty unlikely to vote for Hillary anyway (but some of them won't vote for Obama in the GE either, sigh). I know I should probably start working for Obama's campaign but my plate is already overflowing, and I am thoroughly fed up with electoral politics at this point. (A change to Independent may be in my future. Except then I won't get to vote in primaries. Hmmm, maybe not such a loss.)

My thoughts on Danaher: so far they've apparently worked well in practice. As a process expert, I shudder to think that in my county, the most important process in democracy cannot be audited. But most people just see how much easier it is to use the new machines vs. the old ones, and the outcomes so far have been pretty much what folks expected (no red flags in the vote counts), so everyone has their head in the sand. On the bright side, it seems that it would take a substantial conspiracy - multiple people involved, at significant personal risk - to deliberately manipulate the results. Machine failure is a completely different - and more visible - scenario, and is probably what it will take to convince people that we need a more reliable and auditable process.