[abrazame]

As someone who has worked multiple elections for the Australian Electoral Commission, this is an incredibly rosy view of Australian elections.

You’re thinking of the preliminary count in a polling place. On election night, basically the only thing that’s being counted (estimated) is which of the two (expected) main parties in a seat has the lead. It’s the only thing scrutineers pay attention to - no one watches the preliminary Senate count. Declaration votes (out of area) and below the line Senate votes (complex preferences) aren’t counted /at all/ on election night. No one has ever stopped me from leaving the polling place during a count.

Once the preliminary count is done, the ballots are driven off by the Officer in Charge into the night in his or her personal car for the real count. It’s not hard to be an OIC - it was offered to me while I was still at uni. There’s no particular ethical or vetting requirements to be one, and they’re often older folk who don’t bother reading the rules and requirements, and I’ve seen them do things that are brazenly illegal. Entire boxes of votes have gone missing in the past. We have had to re-run an entire election recently because of it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Australian_Senate_speci...

It’s one thing to be critical of shoddy election practises and I support your indignation, but let’s not fall into tired “America bad” tropes. Elections are hard. We muck ‘em up too.