Bush the elder laid the groundwork for the current systems while president in the 1990s. People he knew got the first contacts soon after, . And then when they were used in Texas in 1995 the state started to switch from democratic to republican and his son won the governorship. Many southern states switched the first year they were used.

What distinguishes the American voting experience from other democracies is

that these systems are closed source and protected by intellectual secrets legally. There is no public knowledge of administers with access keys or any other of the hundreds of details that are addressed in the Baltic states

there is no curiosity about the above by most politically active people. There used to be loud tech community responses about all this, even conventions. But by ten years ago these were effectively ignored.

when the republicans claim cheating by this, they only stay in conspiracy mode and never try to use technical help in explaining why these are bad to have.

the democrats react to the above and fully embrace the voting machines despite having no clue how they work or are monitored, and a new type of bogus technical experts have become accepted to explain how this is all very safe. Again with no talk to most of the hardware or software community

there is an effort to use paper ballots and were having some success but this was sidelined by the 2020 election denial fallout