Whatsapp won because it realised for normal people phone number based authentication is way way easier than username/password. It's almost impossible to hack, can't forget your password, and it's way easier to use.
It's actually extremely easy to hack in a targeted manner...
You can either do it with social engineering at range or even intercept the sms if you're physically close enough to the recipient
It's simply more likely that the US has more high value targets, has more criminals/grifters doing this kind of fraud/scam, and non-US media talks less about these identity theft events.
I agree that the US' lack of federally issued modern and safe credentials that then tie into the private sector is laughably painful. (But it's not like the rest of the world is that much better.)
The actual US voting systems are pretty okay (mail ballots, extremely low voter fraud, results are counted in a few days), the way that turns into representation is the problem. The usual news about voter ID laws are pure fascist voter suppression.
Every single argument against their current system and arguments against ID is what we all do here? Think you're too deep into their political rhetoric here and peddle misinformation.
Then there are other ways to achieve the same thing without SIM swaps. SS7 level rerouting can be done globally ("this phone is now roaming from within our network").
For the average user having no password is 100x more secure than the rubbish password they picked.
For the high value target the opposite is hopefully true, then again solarwinds123