Clark County would love to replace our voting machines with newer, shinier ones that require less maintenance. But that would require money, which is something many local governments don't have a lot of at the moment.

Needs to be calibrated sometimes. I work elections for Clark County, Nevada. I've worked every election the last 10 years. And yes, the touchscreens can fall out of calibration and make it difficult to select the correct candidates. I can't speak to other election districts, but here in Clark County we're trained on how to perform this calibration on site (it's very simple) so that any problems reported by voters can be handled right away.

You may wish to look at an article written by David Brin concerning "The Transparent Society" which can be found at http://www.kithrup.com/brin/tscontents.html

Dr. Brin postulates that perhaps the best way to promote privacy is simply to do away with it altogether. The gist of his argument is that at present almost any information about you can be viewed (and abused) by people with the power to obtain it. His idea is to simply make it so that EVERYONE can look at EVERY piece of data about EVERYONE else... a theory referred to as the "Glass House Theory of Privacy". Under such a system, no public official could abuse their powers because anyone could be watching. Anyway, it's an interesting article and he explains himself a hell of a lot better than I explain him!