Also, my country manages to hand count 30,000,000 ballots in less than two days and we get a very accurate result prediction on the day of the vote using a sample of official results from small polling places known to be representative.
Hand counting is not a problem at all when implemented properly.
I’d prefer accurate >> speed when it comes down to something as important as an governmental election.
Accurate, triple-redundant hand counts can be done quickly - like in a day. Spot rechecks and audits may add another week.
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...
This is insane.
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?
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.
More importantly, yes you can rig a paper ballot, but you can't do it large scale without everybody knowing it.
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.
Electronic tabulation of paper ballots is the best of both worlds. You get results today, they're pretty accurate, and there's a paper trail if you want to go back and argue later.