... run a test batch of ballots through it (voting machine)
(Source: step 6.2 of Wisconsin's official vote recount manual, courtesy of Bobson's answer here).
As a software developer, this seems like an obvious (and extremely effective) step to ensure that a voting machine has not been tampered with / hacked. If you feed a test batch of ballots, with known count of expected results, you will know for sure if the machine is deviating in how it counts.
Obviously, a hack could theoretically be sophisticated enough to circumvent that (e.g. by only starting tampering at a certain time of after a certain "deductible" # of initial ballots are counted), but that still seems like a significant upgrade to anti-hacking/tampering capability compared to doing nothing at all.
As such,
Why don't ALL voting machines get fed a test batch of ballots before the election to prevent tampering/hacking? (as a required procedure before polls open).
this works even on machines where there are no paper ballots, because the inputs can be designed beforehand so you know the expected count without the need to check paper trail.