Or perhaps, it's not that these machines are fixed, they're just crap to start with. It takes a special kind of genius to make a counting machine that can't count.

If it's a choice between conspiracy and cock-up, cock up tends to win hands down....

Rigging it to Hillary makes perfect sense to me, even if the Clintons and their allies are not involved.  She's the weakest and most polarizing of the top three Dems.  I know Kossacks like to say that Reps will smear anyone, and that's true, but the smears will be more effective on the candidate with 50% disapprovals -- and she has the audacity to say that she wins on electability -- than it will on the two candidates with 15% disapprovals.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

it's as if Diebold realised that the game was up and this is one of their last chances to really get the GOPs desired result.

If they can do it, and see certain gain in it, wouldn't they do it? Is there anything stopping them?

Reading through the leaked Diebold internal emails several years ago, it was a case of shotgunning buggy, incomplete, non-robust product through development at the request of management/marketing. At the other end, no-bid style corruption along with election commissions that simply didn't know what they were doing (no understanding of the benefits and limitations of modern technology) got their machines in the door. The machines are embarrassingly insecure, meaning the barrier to tampering is low and does not require a well funded network of people to pull off.

you are the media you consume.