B. Balloting Integrity and Verification Process

All votes shall be cast on physical, voter‑marked ballots at an official polling location or by authorized paper absentee ballot. Remote or online voting is prohibited.

Each ballot shall be scanned by a machine that verifies whether the ballot has been completed in a way that allows accurate tallying. If the ballot contains errors—such as invalid markings, overvoting, or unmarked races—the machine shall notify the voter and offer the opportunity to correct the ballot or spoil and replace it.

Once verified and accepted, the original physical ballot shall be deposited into a secure, tamper‑resistant container to serve as the legal and auditable record of the vote. No vote shall be considered valid or official unless its physical ballot is retained and secured in this manner.

Each ballot shall be assigned a unique, non‑personally‑identifiable tracking code. This code shall be recorded by the scanning machine and included in the electronic record. During any audit or recount, election officials must be able to verify that each physical ballot corresponds exactly to its recorded digital interpretation, ensuring full traceability without compromising ballot secrecy.

All software used to scan, tally, or report votes shall be fully open‑source and publicly available for inspection no later than one hundred eighty (180) days before any election in which it is used. The Federal Elections Commission shall maintain a reference implementation meeting this requirement. Private vendors may supply hardware or software only if every line of code they deploy is equally open‑source and subject to public scrutiny.

After every election, at least two percent (2%) of precincts in each county, rounded up to the next whole precinct and selected at random, shall be hand‑counted to verify machine accuracy; if discrepancies exceed the statutory tolerance, the hand count shall expand until resolved. Absentee ballots shall be accepted upon receipt in their official return envelope bearing a unique, non‑personally‑identifiable tracking code issued by election officials. No additional verification or cure process shall be required, and a ballot may be rejected only upon documented evidence that its tracking code has been previously used or that the envelope shows clear signs of tampering.