Manual counts aren't practical in the US because our ballots can be crazy long with tons of contests and candidates. It would be very error-prone to do this manually.
Manual counts aren't practical in the US because our ballots can be crazy long with tons of contests and candidates. It would be very error-prone to do this manually.
If you don't trust the tabulating machines, we have mechanisms to check them at scale. Basically, randomly sample the paper ballots and check them against the machine results. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit
If you don't trust the people running elections, you should know that polling places in the US are run by community volunteers. Literally anyone who's a registered voter can participate and see how the sausage is made. In fact, there's a shortage of these folks, so boards of election are thrilled to get more people participating.