In Santa Clara County, California (which includes most of what people think of as Silicon Valley), touch screens were used for a number of years but have been dumped in favor of optical scan. To vote, you draw a line on the paper ballot connecting two large black blocks - pretty difficult to screw up - it's like making an "X" in a box, only with one less line. Why use a complex, vulnerable technology when a simpler one will do?

I can think of dozens of touchscreen devices that never need calibration - never ever seen it needed - those claims are bullsh** for either the most pathologically incompetent electronics engineering you ever saw or the secret backdoor code designed to rig the election is misfiring and showing itself. 
This is all part of the plan. Mark my words McCain will win despite not getting the votes. This election is fixed, and when it's eventually questioned that the election was fixed by hacked voting machines the can point out these flip flop errors.

Not Super Mario, Agin!

We have AVC "Edge" machines in our precincts. They come with a sealed printer that prints votes on a cassette of paper. The printout is about the width of a cash register receipt and it appears through a window to the left of the screen. You get to see the printout before hitting your 'vote'; the printout is then scrolled away to ensure privacy. Each vote print has a 2D barcode check pattern printed with it -- I'm not sure how its used because we don't touch the printers (if they need changing out then someone from the elections office has to drive over and do it).

I've looked closely at these machines (I run a Precinct) and I can't see an easy way for the results to be fiddled, much less a way to do it without being detected. This suggests that those machines that have problems -- the Diebolds are the ones that get fingered the most -- are either built by grossly incompetent engineers or they're designed to be fiddled. Either way the complaints are justified.

Incidentally, the Edge machines have numerous seals to protect their internals. Each seal has a serial number that has to be checked against a master list. Everything has to be sealed and all seals accounted for. I think they're Ok, but even so nearly everyone prefers to use the Optech Insight card readers -- they count, they keep an audit log and the voting cards are managed and accounted for. We do try.

To read this AGAIN after the last two elections makes me despair. When the same inept things keep happening it's not surprising people think there is a deliberate ploy to the events. I hope this time around there isn't too much flipping but I reckon we've seen it all since 2001, anything is possible!

West Virginia voters have been complaining about this for some time and it has been in the news. It first started when 3 voters had their vote switched from Obama to McCain.

The company says it's a calibration problem. Which means they probably picked the cheapest patent they could find to implement the touch-screen. (How often does your local touch screen ATM do this to you?)

Wouldn't it be just consistent to have voting machines flipping results in a country where you have only two parties, which manage to suppress all alternatives, and where the two parties split electoral districts to maintain parity?