Well, now, the way the Diebold technician explained it to me when I voted early the day before yesterday, "election theft" has nothing to do with it.
The totals from all the touchscreen machines have to be transmitted to Diebold headquarters because they are just "raw vote totals".
Before the central tabulators can accept these raw totals, they have to be processed by Diebold's proprietary software in the mainframes back at Diebold's headquarters in Ohio.
The processed vote totals are then transmitted back to central tabulators in the states, and combined to give the numbers reported to the public.
It's all extremely high-tech, but it does require a lot of field technicians to be sure communications between thousands of local precincts and the "mothership" are smooth, fast, and very low profile.