Someone needs to explain why the Dominion Software is so much more complicated than an IBM punch card reader from the 50s or a high school placement test bubble counter from the 70s. It's only function is to tally. A Commodore 64 is up to that task. The fact these machines are complex / flexible/ proprietary should set off hundreds of alarm bells. It's only supposed to record a dozen different 1 or 0 per ballot.
One of the problems is our insatiable hunger for data and stats.
We don't only need to know the final tally of votes cast, but we NEED the breakouts by precinct, county, party, etc.
We also are supposed to be matching votes cast to registration records. If Jim Doe casts a ballot, we need to make sure he's in the registration database. If he can't be located, some states allow on-the-spot registration. Others allow a ballot to be cast with registration verification done afterward. The contingent ballot will be counted if the voter was registered, and discarded if not.
Much of that is done using printouts at the polling places, but when talking about mail-in ballots, it's mostly done by workers in front of computers who do the matching.
It was the statistical reporting that allowed people to compare registered voter numbers, ballots counted, and party leaning from election to election. That is part of what just didn't look right in 2020. States where Trump won all but one "bell weather" county lost the state. That's never happened before, and nobody has answered the obvious question: How?