Reply #31: There are no impartial observers, and people are no more trustworthy than machines

[eridani]

What we need is CHECKS AND BALANCES. No stakeholder is impartial, but if you have a wide enough assortment of them watching the process and each other, that helps establish a transparent process. Also, hand counting (while the gold standard for counting just one race) is simply not as accurate if more than three races are counted concurrently. However, we need to prove that the opscan system has not been hacked or developed problems, which is why exxtensive handcount audits must be performed also.

The simple fact of using two different systems increases reliability, just as getting similar age estimates of petrified wood from counting tree rings and performing carbon dating increrases confidence in the results.