Out of curiosity, what does a UK ballot look like? I found [1], is that typical?
Part of the problem might be one of ballot design. A US ballot is typically considerably more complicated than that. Here's one from New York [2]. There will be many races; in a presidential election there will be president, usually senator, representative, governor, state senator, local councilman, and assorted other offices. At least in New York State, the candidates will be presented by party, so a single candidate may be on the ballot multiple times.
Nobody is counting the US one by hand overnight; not without some pretty comprehensive redesigns of the ballot.
That's one of the simpler UK ballots. Some of our council elections allow us to elect more than one candidate, and our mayoral and police and crime commissioner elections uses the rather oddball supplementary vote system.
The Democrats ran in 4 "parties", and the Republicans in 3 "parties", for governor.
The Libertarian party nominated 2 separate sets of governor/deputy governor.
The non main parties nominated the same people (sometimes), but not for some categories, randomly. Some people are nominated on different parties that nominate different people for governor.
Ultimately, it's a 2-person race in most posts, and a single nomination for coroner.
Why not have 14 simple ballots with a straight choice?
Australia also counts all the votes by hand. In most cases the results for the lower house are known before the day is over, so like the UK we are pretty good at counting votes.
The same people also do the upper house count, which usually elects 1/4 the number of people in the lower house. Very roughly, the results are usually know in a month or so. https://www.aec.gov.au/voting/counting/senate_count.htm
If the results were recorded electronically I guess a computer would spit out the final outcome within a few minutes of the ballot box closing.
In the UK state-level interference would likely go unnoticed if it mugged only postal votes and didn't push too obviously-far in one direction or another. I've been on the receiving end of mail interference and since then I can only assume it's become a lot cheaper to do than it was.
Part of the problem might be one of ballot design. A US ballot is typically considerably more complicated than that. Here's one from New York [2]. There will be many races; in a presidential election there will be president, usually senator, representative, governor, state senator, local councilman, and assorted other offices. At least in New York State, the candidates will be presented by party, so a single candidate may be on the ballot multiple times.
Nobody is counting the US one by hand overnight; not without some pretty comprehensive redesigns of the ballot.
[1] https://www.gravesham.gov.uk/home/elections-and-voting/guide...
[2] http://www.otsegocounty.com/depts/boe/images/WO.jpg