I know, it's a mess. In Wyoming, we had paper ballots that were then run through a scanner, as you describe, and our totals were hand delivered on paper to the county courthouse, which is doable where you have tiny populations like we did. And we bundled up all the paper ballots, which are stored somewhere, available in case of a recount, either to rescan or hand count.
Of course, it's always possible for software hanky-panky in the automatic tallying. I don't know what to say about that. Hand counting every vote in this day and age would just take forever. And even then people would find ways to cheat, I'm sure.
I know, it's a mess. In Wyoming, we had paper ballots that were then run through a scanner, as you describe, and our totals were hand delivered on paper to the county courthouse, which is doable where you have tiny populations like we did. And we bundled up all the paper ballots, which are stored somewhere, available in case of a recount, either to rescan or hand count.
Of course, it's always possible for software hanky-panky in the automatic tallying. I don't know what to say about that. Hand counting every vote in this day and age would just take forever. And even then people would find ways to cheat, I'm sure.