Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is absolute hogwash, there are other methods than a full hand recount if you have a paper trail, some of which only require counting a small number of the ballots by hand. The best example of this is a Risk Limiting Audit (RLA). You only have to re-count a smaller number of ballots until the overwhelming probability is that the vote is confirmed, or that the vote is rejected. Depending on the disparity between t…
During the mid aughts, the consensus of the Election Verification Network (EVN) crowd (academics, election administrators, feds) was that audits were no better than manual recounts and just as expensive. I'll read the paper you linked, but know that it's contrary to the received wisdom, and I'm very skeptical of any claims that auditing elections are feasible or worthwhile. By audit, I mean anything short of a full m…
Colorado successfully performed an RLA, and didn't have to recount every ballot. If you really want to read more, Free and Fair (IIRC, the same group bidding on the DARPA grant) has open source software and instructions on how to perform RLAs: https://github.com/FreeAndFair/ColoradoRLA