I live here and had access to local news as well as that cable news channels as the primary played out. What I saw was a bunch of people relying on non-scientific polls to make predictions. Sure, they should get you in the ballpark, but you can't rely on them and claim they're good for much beyond making guesses more reliable than, say, throwing darts at a chart with candidate names. (Totally not legal if you can actually hit what you aim at.)

I make guesses, but I know that's all they are and when things don't come out the way I thought they would, I don't have a problem saying I was wrong. If you get too invested in you're predictions, you wind up desperately trying to prove you were right after all, no matter what sort of spinning and fact massacring you have to do.

I doubt anyone bothered to read the article that Tom posted. Usually, the first and most obvious reason is the right one. Not all the time, but usually. 'If it looks like a duck...' etc.

I also know that some folks are just fond of conspiracy theories, no matter what mundane explanations make more sense. Nobody's going to change that. I also know that to some, the majority of people in the world can't be trusted and will lie, cheat, and steal to make things come out the way they want.

There ARE people that bad in the world, but you get a different perspective on the accusations and cynicism when it's your home. When people accuse such an enormous number of people of conspiring to throw an election, they're accusing me, you and the majority of people of being crooked. I don't know about you, but I don't like people saying that about me.

As to the original counting, the town count and report to the state. The numbers are available to everyone, and it would be simple for the town counters to say, "Hey, that's NOT what we reported." If people are like me, they usually go check out what their town did.

There could be minor problems with the machines, but I don't believe they would affect the numbers significantly.