system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How is vote counting in developed countries kept accurate and accountable when so many powerful people and organizations have huge incentives to to tamper and the power to do so?

I'm especially thinking about powerful corporations and organizations. The financial benefit they receive from having a politician "in the pocket" is probably in the hundreds of millions, even billions, and there are many powerful companies and organizations out there. Say if even three of these companies worked together, they could have 1 billion dollars at their disposal. Think about the power in that much money. Everyone has their price, they could pay off many people at every step of the voting process in order to create their desired outcome, they could pay some of the best programmers in the world to change records. How is this prevented?
gpt
>How is this prevented?

By having a lot of people who can see what other people are doing. Paying off one person in each step of the voting process is not enough to make any meaningful impact. At most it appears as a statistical anomaly, which may or may not be enough to warrant an 'investigation'.

Voting policies also vary from state to state in terms of the requirements and information needed. You don't just 'corrupt the voting system'. To really corrupt our first world voting system, you need to disrupt on a local level in many, many states.

Plus there will always be a money trail you can follow if there is corruption and somebody is being paid off, but these sort of things have to be caught by people who manage the financing and budgets of these people/companies.

Rich, powerful people are not inherently bad. Just as much as some rich people may try to undermine our democratic system, there are just as many rich people with genuine incentives to see a fair process. Also as long as we can keep as much people working on each level of the voting process, the likelihood of corruption 'sneaking' through the system is largely unfounded.