I'm puzzled. Recounts happen all the time, when ordered. I work for a local Board of Elections in New York. Each ballot still exists after the day is done--on a card, which the voter himself has marked and fed into a machine that scans and retains it. And the machine and its location are recorded with each batch of ballots, each of which is numbered and tracked.
The point is that ballots can be examined and recounted and compared with the count on the machine tape.
Are you saying Va. is in another universe, for some unusual reason?
It is not the counting of accepted ballots that is the issue, it is the pre-counting handling of the absentee ballots. I presume the signature match goes against the registration data. Signature looks different? What is the registration? “D” Count it. “R” Reject it. Down the line races not voted? Fill in the oval for the “D” candidate. Ballot voted straight “R”? replace it with one of these, shred the original. Lots can be done when the process is unobserved.