I will defer to your knowledge because it appears you have a deeper understanding of the internals.
At a user level for me in this last general, the only issues I've observed have been independent of the machine(s).
We are perhaps looking at different machines on different timelines and locale, but I don't doubt that there is a long way to go in terms of reliability and efficacy.
Because everyone does everything their own way, it's very hard to generalize about elections in the USA. Which is a problem all on its own.
In reflecting on your direct observations (experiences), I'm chewing on why we have different assumptions. I'd say most of the time, most of the gear and procedures work pretty good. Prior to a botched local election in 2004, I had a very high opinion of my local election administration. And it was only after really digging into the problem space that I started to see when the reality didn't quite match the narrative.
One thing noob me didn't appreciate was that with FPTP form of elections, our system is unnecessarily brittle. My large county has at least one mandatory manual recount every general election. Triggered when the margin of victory is smaller than the error rate.
That's when the real drama starts.
Honestly, I feel ridiculous obsessing over jitter in the process when the correct fix is to switch to a more robust form of elections. If we switched to a combo of ranked choice voting and proportional representation, the stakes would be so much lower, and trust in the process would be so much higher.
Again, thank you for replying. I'm grateful that you and many others have leaned into this issue. More eyeballs (attention) is better.
At a user level for me in this last general, the only issues I've observed have been independent of the machine(s).
We are perhaps looking at different machines on different timelines and locale, but I don't doubt that there is a long way to go in terms of reliability and efficacy.