Any public officials who approved the use of “voting” machines that just add unnecessary complexity to the process, and agreed to terms of use that essentially make them an obscure “black box” are either drooling idiots, or they’re in on the scheme to commit fraud in elections. Both the additional complexity and the vendor-demanded secrecy make these systems ripe for fraud, and I think that is the real reason they exist.
“There is NO excuse for any aspect of the design or operation of a “voting” machine to be protected as proprietary information. The only reason for secrecy is to make fraud difficult to detect. I’m sure Dominion would protest with something like, “We have to keep certain information secret to prevent hacking”, or some such excuse, but then they’ve insisted that the machines are not online (a lie), so there should be no vulnerability from outside.”
Dominion used generated QR codes which can provide a modest amount of security benefit.