Risk limiting audit results from PRIMARY in Pennsylvania - one batch showed half of the votes had not been counted

[MichMan]

43. 100% absolute perfection is unobtainable

Planes crash, mail gets lost, medical procedures have undesired outcomes, people make mistakes, machines can fail.

You will never eliminate any possibility of error in any system like 50 state wide elections. You can do everything possible to minimize it, but impossible to eliminate. No one expects that voter fraud can be eliminated 100%, but we say it is rare and doesn't happen enough to affect results.

My state, like many others, uses optical scanners. Voters fill in the circles too lightly or incompletely, put an "X" instead of filling in the circle, mark more than one candidate, etc, etc. That is why states have automatic recounts if the margins are very close, but none of the presidential margins were anywhere near that threshold.

Hand counting would have significantly more errors.