Taiwan has the best vote counting procedure. Inefficiency is feature. Ballots are hold up, choice is announced and score is publicly tracked.

https://youtu.be/cqKt-lPfJuw

There is also the Emmy Nominated HBO Documentary "Hacking Democracy", from 2006.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Democracy

i still refer people to this also. He neatly summarises the core issues. People watching other people count marks on dead trees works great.

I like Tom but I think he's wrong to dismiss vote machine + paper receipt as an "expensive pencil". You get the best of both worlds with this option. The benefits of the voting machine give voters more screen real estate to view the candidates for a single race, more chances to correct their vote, and even the option to randomize candidate placement. You also get faster vote tally by doing it electronically. In addition if you produce a paper receipt you now have a physical backup to verify individual machines or precincts as a whole. You could craft policy to automatically do audits on say 30% of the machines before actually releasing the tally, with the option to do a full audit if needed.

The Brazilian design for voting machines addresses most of those concerns in a nice way. I couldn’t find a full description in English but Wikipedia has a few bits: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Brazil