Other developed countries have, for decades, reliably given results within hours of polls closing, without "automation or obscure technology". Time to results is a factor in the credibility of the results, just as auditability and transparency.
International election observers regularly raise concerns about protracted and drawn out election counts in less developed parts of the world. I wonder how they would report on US elections.
How do these other countries handle mail-in ballots? In most (maybe all) US states, a ballot postmarked on election day is valid as long as it is received by some specific point (usually Friday) after election day. Thus, in the US there are an undetermined number of valid votes that have not even been received by election officials yet.
In the UK at least, it needs to be with your local authority by 10PM on polling day. If you fail to send it in time, you can just bring it down manually instead.
(aside: I am generally opposed to postal voting. Postal vote seems even more prone to abuse than remote electronic voting.)
Every registered voter gets a letter some time before the election and if you want to vote by mail you have to send the letter back for free and they'll send everything over. The ballots have to be received by the end of the day of election. There's a lot of time so you won't miss that date. The letter you get to remind you of voting also contains information about where you have to be to vote in person.
There's very little last minute changes in Germany. The election is not decided in the last couple of weeks before the election, people have made up their minds at that point.
I think the crucial part is that there's absolutely no effort involved. You basically show up at the polling place on the Sunday of the election and you're good to go. If you're too lazy for that you can to everything by mail. If you decide to vote by mail and then forget to send it via the post you can just drop it off at the polling station as well.
The argument here is: why should someone who voted on election day, or even a day or two before have their vote thrown out because their ballot doesnt arrive to be counted until the day after the election?
I think the argument that there is plenty of time is reasonable, but many elections in the US can be very, very close, so it does matter. Throwing out valid ballots that were mailed on or before election day effectively disenfranchises people (keep in mind some people cant go to polls to vote or drop off ballots, and in some places it is illegal to have anyone besides the registered voter drop off the ballot, so it must be mailed).
If you do not mail your ballot on time, there is another simple solution, you go to the (lineless) polls on election day.
When they check everyone in they confirm that they have not already received a mail-in-ballot from that individual before allowing you to the booth.
With enough time allocated for mail-in-ballots, I feel that it doesn't matter that the deadline is earlier. Deadlines are fairly arbitrary either way and at some point you need to select a winner.
If you have plenty of opportunity to vote and you do not vote by the deadline, your vote is not counted regardless of the method you have chosen.
I suspect they have a way to mandate how local governments handle the voting. The US does not. That's the barrier.
There's nothing magic about holding election, that prevents Florida from doing it trustworthily and would permit the USA do achieve the same feat. A great many states do it, some federal. It requires coordination and reliability, in much the same way as delivering the mail, supplying everyone with fresh milk, handling vaccines, etc.
Some German states even partly devolve elections further. There was a minor scandal regarding that last year, when one city chose to deploy some software that broke (and as a result, some votes weren't tallied until many hours later than expected, perhaps >24h). That's the kind of scandal federally devolved elections can have, the kind the Americans should aspire to having.
Those "rights" (there's a problem with applying that term to states and not people, but its a side issue here) do not include the "right" to run federal elections without oversight by Congress, which has both direct and explicit regulatory power for federal legislative elections under the Constitution, and the Constitutional role of assessing whether electoral votes are properly given when counting them, and has, in fact, has acted based on the latter power to direct states as to what they must do in federal Presidential elections to shield their votes from potential challenge.
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.
This narrative is pushed by tradition, news media, and the politicians themselves (if it's in their interest). I think we need to separate this narrative in two separate days; one day is Voting Day, the day on which everyone who wants to participate in voting must have their ballot mailed or submitted, and Election Day, which should be a month later, after all votes are counted, where the official results are published, and we accept a new president.
This is good for the American people, in that it's reliable and clearly defined, good for the media, because now they can have a month long headline where they hem and haw and speculate about who will win, and good for the politicians, in that there's time for a smooth transition.
Certainly not perfect but I think we can all be glad there aren't any "hanging chad" punchcards or un-auditable lever machines to worry about this election.