The difference here is that they can do it with few people or alone, possibly hard do detect, and most importartly, at scale. Attacks on paper voting require many people in differet locations, can be re-counted, an they don't scale.
Security is a "better than" game. Just because option X isn't perfect doesn't mean X isn't a worthwhile solution given all other alternatives.
[1] https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/25120/interactive...
And, for any politician who does that... I can't say they are completely making stuff up. It might just be better if we acknowledge and accept that old technology isn't bad. Windows XP is perfectly fine for controlling CNCs and medical devices to this day, as long as it's not connected to the internet. Probably better for it actually, because it won't restart to install an update with modern Windows. I'm not in favor of "new for the sake of new."
And if everyone continues with the kind of sentiment prevalent in this thread that's likely the best we're ever going to get.
Government do not have this incentive, and how do you recover from errors once malicious actors have gained power ?
Related [1] where the DNC refused to use correct caucus results and instead insisted on using the incorrect computations as they were a "legal document".
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/14/us/politics/i...