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I don't have a fixed POV on this issue, but I think your accurate historical definition of "political machine" is beside the point. My "election truther" buddies, if they were to refer to a "machine" behind ballot fraud, would be using a known old term to refer to something new and different, a difference that is key to their argument. In their worldview, a paradigm shift has taken place that has removed the common man from the political machine (this is the essence of Trumpism). Now that the titans of industry are predominantly Democrats, they have conspired with Democrat politicians to circumvent the inconvenience of getting votes from regular people. The argument is that they have figured out how to rig the game at a higher level, and everything else is kayfabe. They use "current thing" to distract the public from realizing that the public is now irrelevant. Meanwhile, a closed loop of graft and favors is making everyone in the elite richer and richer. (Add to this recipe some degree of Satanic grooming, if you want a full picture of this theory of the world.)
This isn't my worldview -- I expect more uncoordinated chaos in how things fold and unfold -- but I hear it a lot, in different degrees of eloquence. Like most other machines that have been around since the dawn of the industrial revolution, political machines have gone through technological changes that would now confuse the mechanics of that earlier time.
But that is his point - the word isn't adding anything to 'dems rig elections', neither what happened nor what they allege happened resembles the old 'political machines' at all, so it's just increasing confusion. Analogies can be informative, even if mostly inaccurate literally, and this sometimes gives words new - and useful - meaning. It wouldn't be unreasonable for, if a novel form of political organization sprang up that took some things from the old 'political machines' but was very different, to use the term, and maybe for its meaning to evolve. But that analogy or new meaning, like anything interesting, can be uninformative - which is what's happening here.
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If that's the case then it's a classic motte and bailey. The reason they use the word "machine" is to invoke images of Daly stuffing ballot boxes in Chicago and the like. But when you point out that the system of political organization that allowed this to happen doesn't exist anymore in any meaningful sense, they retreat back to saying that it's really just a vague understanding among elites.
I don't think the "motte" version of the argument is just "a vague understanding among elites." There would be a lot of discussion of the various blue-team "pop-up" NGOs funded by elites (e.g. IDEX and that network of shell-charities in D.C. that got coverage about six months ago whose name I've forgotten - Blue something?), progressive capture of institutional philanthropy, the illegible and incestuous relationships between various "civil society" groups, and the ways in which this funding and influence can reach deep into official government functions, like voting.
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