As a Virginia election officer, current procedures require that 2 election officers (Chief and Assistant Chief which generally represent both political parties) securely remove the ballots from the machine, count them and log them in multiple places on forms that we submit back to the main election office. We secure the ballots physically, label them, seal the container they are put in and the Chief returns them to the main office when polls close. Ballots should not be allowed to be transmitted by other parties since chain of custody would be compromised. Furthermore, since all election officers sign off on how many ballots we started with vs end up with, if third parties get involved in the transport of those ballots to the main election office after the election, the integrity of the chain of custody is lost. Paper ballots are critical to validating election results. Paper ballots also should have a physical connection back to the original voter in my opinion so we could validate that the vote was cast by a liegitimate Virginia resident and US citizen on what date and the vote entered was assigned to the candidate that the VOTER intended for it to be assigned to.

The existing ballot recording and transmittal procedure works well . We  also document and secure physically the ballots and count them and validate and sign off on how many ballots were used vs sent to us, spoiled, etc. This current process works well and it should be maintained. I do not see the point in making any changes to existing procedures.