The most important feature of a paper ballot is that the general populace can read them, and understand how they work. The worst feature of any electronic-only voting system is that the general populace cannot verify that they work. This is a bad thing even in the case where no hacking occurred, since it reduces trust in the validity of the outcome by anyone who dislikes the result.
The general populace can't really verify the results of paper ballots either, that would mean letting anyone who wanted to do their own manual counts of all ballots.
A poll worker isn't the general public, though, that's still a limited number of privileged individuals. The general public would be literally anyone off the street.
And a single poll worker still wouldn't be able to verify all of the votes in an election. There's still an insurmountable trust issue where most of the public has to accept the results from what amounts to a black box, which paper ballots don't entirely solve.
> A poll worker isn't the general public, though, that's still a limited number of privileged individuals. The general public would be literally anyone off the street.
In Australia we have observers for the counting process and every party or candidate can send representatives. Political parties are practically begging for volunteers in this role. We also have a much more complex preferential voting system but the manual counting process still shows results 30-60 minutes after polls close in all but the tightest races.
> And a single poll worker still wouldn't be able to verify all of the votes in an election.
Anyone cheating would have to involve a huge number of people around the country and the people watching those people. Getting elected legitimately would be far easier.
Unless it's a situation like 2000, and the infamous "hanging chad" issue. It sure looks like you voted, but whoops your ballot just isn't counted because of a physical failure.
