One of my readers gave this input on how the Australians count votes. This sounds much better. Machines should be fine. Since I was myself a computer programmer. But the problem lies in that if you have corruption among those making the machines or writing the computer programs, then you have a huge problem, which is clearly what happened in the USA sadly. So maybe the Australian method is much better in a very unreliable Western world.

This is what Maria wrote:
The votes should be on paper and counted by people not machines. In Australia we vote on paper and in South Australia at least the votes are counted one by one by people and can be observed by a representative of each candidate. Any mistakes by the vote counter or disputes over unclear votes will cause the counting to stop until the observers and vote counter is satisfied. Much safer method.