If we want to have safe, fair, and secure elections we must change our current system. We cannot continue going forward with what we have because every election will be questioned due to too many vulnerabilities. We need to write new election software programs and assign rules with maximum security and supervision when accessing the software especially when performing maintenance.
The voters registration software validates voter registrations per state, per county, per person. Any illegitimate, illegal, non citizen, and deceased registrations are automatically removed from the registration. Multiple names with single addresses and/or duplicate names registered to multiple addresses are red flagged and sent to all current representatives across the United States for maximum transparency to be investigated because we cannot rely on trusting only a few people.
The election software retains all records for every election, records and retains any access, prevents deletions of all records and files, prevents alterations (e.g.) flipped votes, validates votes with voter registration software, validates signatures, prevents duplications, prevents all fraud listed in the voters registration software column.
Both softwares will need a backup location to store all information in the event of any failure.
There also needs to be stiff penalties for bad actors who are tried at the Supreme Court level. We cannot go soft on anyone committing fraud especially acts of treason.
Please respond with any other suggestions that would compliment the systems
For a small municipality, hand counting will work in the sense that it can be done in a reasonable amount of time so results can be reported. I understand that small communities in the northeast US do this. For a larger municipality, I do not think that hand counting is practical or feasible and some studies conclude that they will be less accurate than machine counting.
There is an alternative method that is a compromise between hand counting all ballots and machine counting. First, you must use paper ballots. Secondly, you use a process called a “risk limiting audit”. There are a couple of ways to do the RLA process but I prefer the batch counting method. This is done by using a selection of polling places, hand counting the ballots cast in that precinct and comparing the hand count to the ballot scanner machine totals. If the selected polling places show less than a 1% discrepancy rate from the machine counts, then one can extrapolate that the machine counts do represent the ballots that have been cast.
If it turns out that machines are necessary, they need to be open source. The present situation of inscrutable and unverifiable black boxes telling us the outcome of voting is intolerable.