As regards the Dominion system used in Georgia, no excuse is needed. A separate system validated the result. I'm sorry you can't wrap your head around that.
Dominion in Georgia is the story of votes switched from Trump to Biden.
The number of paper ballots would still match the machine total number of ballots.
You do get that, right?
The “recount” just proved that the machines switched the votes without any inadvertent errors. ;-)