"It is not the job of the Federal Govt. to furnish the states with voting machines. That is left up to the individual counties. The machines are VERY expensive and in many counties the choice of how to spend the operating funds for the next year focuses more on social services and street repair than on the latest in voting machines."

I'd have thought that factors like that would mean that it is a Federal matter, ensuring that everyone in the country has an equal crack at taking part in Fedeal elections.

If that means the Federal Government paying for machines, or for additional election workers, so be it. You can't get much more Federal than electing a president. Maybe the Supreme Court might restore a little of its damaged reputation by determining something along these lines.

Economising on the voting process - badly maintained machines, insufficient polling stations and voting booths, insufficient people supervising the polling stations, and not enough people doing the votings and so forth, - means people are unable to vote, votes don't get counted, mistakes get made, recounts are seen as a problem, and fraud is easier.

And all this can mean that sometimes the winner isn't actually the one whom people voted for. (And that might be a Republican or a Democrat - this isn't something that should divide on party lines.)

And that applies whether it's machines or paper ballots or coloured stones dropped in an urn.