[dragonwriter]

> I suspect they have a way to mandate how local governments handle the voting. The US does not.

Yes, it does.

It does for federal legislative elections because while the Constitution gives power to run those elections to the State in the first instance, it also gives Congress the power to jump in and regulate anything it wants about "the times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, [...] except as to the places of choosing Senators".

And, while it doesn't have truly mandatory federal direction for Presidential elections (for which voting by the people isn't even Constitutionally required), it does in practice for them the same way much of what is done in Presidential elections is already fixed: safe harbor laws defining what states must do to protect their electoral votes from being subject to challenge when counted by Congress.

The US chooses not to exercise the tools it has to mandate how local government handles the voting, and where it does exercise those tools doesn't do it well, and that's the problem, not the absence of the tools.