There must be a paper trail and a way to count ballots cast with that number clearly printed at the bottom of a ballot.
I prefer a two machine method. One prints out a scannable ballot on which the voter makes his/her choices. The other is a scan-tron reader.
If there are 500 ballots cast in a precinct, then they have numbers 1-500 and no more than that will be accepted. There will also be 500 signatures of 500 voters. I have to sign in AND present ID at my precinct here in Ohio. Don’t know what’s hard about matching number of signatures with number of ballots.
I just don’t want any scantron-like devices at all. Just too easy to say ‘oh, we found a whole box of stuff that wasn’t scanned’. And then you can have people looking at each one and deciding if a tiny scuff mark on a line is a valid vote or not.
There was no paper involved with the lever machines and those went ok for a long time. If the electronic ones could be audited by both sides and locked down like an ATM, I don’t think it would be a problem.
All you need is what is called “an audit trail” ~ a “paper trail” means little more than finding a ballot box filled with the votes we need to win.
I do believe they have a system that you describe in our town, or something very similar. There is the voting machine, then there is a way to print the ballot in case they need a copy for recount purposes!
They used a punch-card system for years and years. However, our little town didn’t have a lot of problems with that. In the last few years, the town grew quite a lot. So, I guess they decided they needed something new; especially with the problems that have come along on the national level!