And, as a bonus, the old school method has a tremendously low error rate.

I remember an article in a renowned computer mag about 20 years ago measuring error rates. The newest and greatest voting machine, at the time, still had way worse error rates than hand counting. Never mind everything that was around before. Maybe the most modern systems can achieve the same error rates as hand counting, dunno, haven’t been keeping up.

I was absolutely floored with how bad the error rates of lever operated mechanical machines used to be. How anyone accepted those anywhere near a democracy was beyond me.

Sounds like they are reinventing the main frame, just without the specialized hardware support that guarantees things go right.