[r00fus]

In what world would manual counting have less paper trail?

What is for sure - with voting machines, there is less validation. Hand counting means - all ballots are counted always (by volunteers with all parties invited) - whereas voting machines means a spot-test (in some states), and only a full manual count is when a recount is demanded.

All this to say - I think Dominion did a thorough job - but this all only happened because the election was close. What about those where the election isn't "close"?

[gamblor956]

Voting by hand takes days, which is why it is only done automatically for close elections.

However, a losing candidate may request a recount after the election. In most states, if the margin is outside of a stated threshold, that candidate must pay for the recount. If there is a discrepancy between the two counts, then a hand recount is performed.

If an election isn't close, then the respective Secretary of State will audit (by hand) a random selection of precincts to verify vote totals match, but this is a security check and generally takes place weeks after the election.

[r00fus]

Voting by hand takes days - in the US. Not in Finland, France or the many other countries where voting is done by hand 100% successfully for decades with timely results.

Here's the conundrum - what constitutes what's "out of threshold"? If a voting machine, either by design or flaw, pushes a close vote outside the threshold - then that's a way to bypass the checks & balances and can be exploited by the unethical.

[gamblor956]

Scale matters. 160 million votes were cast in the U.S. in each of the past 2 elections.

36 million votes were cast in France in the last election.

The U.S. is capable of counting 36 million votes by hand overnight as well, and most votes were once counted by hand in the U.S.

What constitutes what's "out of threshold"? If a voting machine, either by design or flaw, pushes a close vote outside the threshold - then that's a way to bypass the checks & balances and can be exploited by the unethical.

That paragraph is disingenuous. A vote that is outside the threshold for an automatic recount is not a close vote; the margin between candidates is thousands of votes (or more).

If a voting machine has a design flaw or other flaw, that would have been discovered during one of the several inspections and trial runs it was put through before being certified for use. Moreover, many states now require paper receipts of all ballots cast (as a result of Russian hacking of election machines in 2016), so if there is any suspicion of manipulated results, the human-legible ballot receipts can be tallied. States with these types of printed ballot receipts will audit the electronic tallies against hand-counts of the printed ballots on a random precinct-level basis.

[r00fus]

You scale by district. You just get more people involved in the counting per ballot location.

It's a scalable method. Yes, the reconfirmation at the regional levels are important.

Your faith in machines is questionable. I leave you with this obligatory xkcd - it's still completely valid: https://xkcd.com/2030/

[gamblor956]

In my state, the machines print out paper ballots in legible English saying exactly who I voted for.

I don't trust the machines, but I do trust the people doing the counting, especially since the counting process is observed by both sides.