You almost have it.
The problems is that hand counting of ballots won’t get it. They pre-printed ballots and delivered them to match the people who they voted for. That’s why you have late ballots, brought it in the middle of the night, or someone giving keys and access for ballot rooms to Democratic operatives. They had to survive a recount so they could say the Republicans were sore loosers, and there was no problem.
The issue is that we have 3 sites of forensic audit so far in the entire US. Maricopa County, AZ, Wyndam NH, and Antrim MI. All of these sites have identified problems with the vote machines. Antrim had database program that shouldn’t have been on it for vote flipping. Wyndam machines gave incorrect tallies, and Maricopa county.......well we don’t really know all the shenanigans there yet.
Strickly speaking from an American, supporter of voter rights, we need every county to undergo a forensic audit at this point. No one should believe that the system is intact until this happens.
I get all that, and it is my understanding is that one of the matters under audit is the ballots themselves, example, is there a stack of 500 sequential ballots all marked with the same ink and all for the same candidate(s)? While not totally outside the realm of possibility, statistically very unlikely. And, is there another sequence of ballots that mirrors the first? And a third? The more of that appears, the likelihood of legitimacy reduces to the realm of statistical impossibility. More than 500 ballots in a sequence? Even more so.
The more you cheat, the more ways you are likely to be found out.
There is absolutely no reason private companies should be involved in the elections. Not even the printing of ballots. It should all be agents of the citizens who are accountable to the laws and to the people, subject to rights and privileges of a free people such as FOIA transparency; and where those agents can be held accountable and not hide behind threats of multi-billion dollar lawsuits, which is preposterous on its face.
Speaking back to you as an American supporter of voter rights, let’s not pretend that elections haven’t ALWAYS come with an unhealthy doses of, well, shenanigans. To pretend otherwise is just silly. There is no reason to believe it doesn’t still occur. Methods may change, the purposes don’t.