That’s why the current gold standard is a machine that marks a human-readable paper ballot, and then a drop box, and then a separate machine that reads and counts the ballots. At all times, the physical manifestation of people’s votes sit in a guarded box, as piles of physical ballots that can be read and counted by humans, if necessary.

Fun fact: my state got Dominion machines like this in 2019 and then immediately elected Democratic Senators for the first time since 2002, when it had switched from punch-card machines to Diebold paperless ones.

In 2024, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a law to get rid of the current machines (which was supposed to have been in effect by now, but has been delayed because it didn't provide funding say what to replace them with).

I'm sure that's all just a series of coincidences.