this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
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The key thing for elections is that all counts ought to be auditable and verifiable. It doesn't matter whether the count is done by humans or electronically. Enough information from each individual vote must be preserved so that counts can be verified, during the legal window for races to be confirmed.
I am old enough that when I first started voting, we used lever machines. You pushed a lever for your choice in each race, then you pushed a big lever, which "recorded" your choice and resets all levers for the next person. But, it recorded your choice on manual dials that showed the vote total. Sometimes, the dial has issues rolling over from "9" to "10", or "9999" to "10000". If your vote got swallowed by the mechanical dial, it's gone! There was no remedy. At the end of the election, the poll workers reported the counts off the dials. If they needed a recount, they looked at the dials and said "Yup, that's the count".
Today, I vote on a paper ballot, which gets fed into a machine. I can see right away if my vote is accepted -- if it is not, I can get a new ballot and try again. All those paper ballots are retained so if there is a recount, they can either be run again or physically inspected by hand. It is much better tha it used to be.