Exactly. You can build machines to tally them up and sort etc. but in the end if all else fails you can physically do or verify the election.

Paper ballots have plenty of flaws. They can be lost/thrown away, accidentally or on purpose, and it’s much easier to know if 1 of a few dozen machines is missing than 1 of hundreds of boxes of ballots. They can be ambiguous (hanging Chads) or someone can physically fill them out incorrectly or invaidly. Humans suck at counting, if it comes down to that.

I think it’s much easier for a nefarious person or party to make a specific claim (“they threw away my ballot”) and much harder to refute it, against a paper ballot than a machine; “the machine was hacked, but I can’t be more specific”

It's just as easy for a machine to throw away and not count your vote. Most machines actually print out encoded paper ballots that have all the same vulnerabilities but are usually harder to verify on the voter's side that they recorded your votes correctly.

It is hard to verify that they voted for X without being able to prove to a 3rd party that you voted for X. This goal is to prevent selling votes, or complying with blackmail like: "we will fire you (or harm you/your pet/family) if you don't vote for X".

And the person voting wants to make sure that when they voted for X, that the machine counted that they voted for X.

I think the compromise between these 2 would be that the receipt is very clear who you voted for, but you have to place that receipt into the ballot box in order to cast your vote. This way there is no possible way to prove to your blackmailer that you voted for X. Also, the machine could be able to deal with disabilities (blind? macular degeneration? need lots of time to actually vote?).

I'm sure I'm missing something here. I think that one would want it easy to verify but impossible to "sell" to a 3rd party. If it is encoded into a barcode, or hash string, the average citizen won't be able to verify any of it.

I think the concept you're looking for is "voter-verified paper audit trail", which is supposed to take place while in the voting booth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter-verified_paper_audit_tra...

Vote selling/blackmail is possible by taking a picture of your ballot while in the voting booth. One way to reduce that threat is to allow people to create as many ballots as they want while in the booth.

And to restrict people from using their cameras while voting, so there's no way to connect it with the ballot actually deposited. (Yes, they can start recording while in the booth, but what happens before/after the recording period.)

All ballots (and everything else) must be tracked, secured, and accounted for thru the entire process. This verifies the entire physical chain of custody. All materials and records are audited by the canvassing board before an election is certified.

Your election administrators probably have their procedures available online. And everyone is allowed to observe any part of the process. I strongly encourage you to observe and participate. Attending the canvas board meetings are quite illuminating.

Source: long time poll judge and election integrity activist.