For a first-world country, and the most powerful democracy on the planet, we have more problems with our elections than we ought to have.
For example, Maryland has an acute shortage of election judges. They are getting harassing telephone calls. Some people have tried to "watch" ballot drop-boxes in some states (to make sure no improprieties take place, I'm quite sure
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Maybe we should call in the UN to observe our elections FFS. It's humiliating that we have these problems. And they should not be tolerated.
Different states have different voting methods. When I started voting, there were four different systems present in this state. Some jurisdictions were using the old booths where you pulled levers, some were optical marks, some were punch cards. To make it uniform across the state they went to touch-screen computers (which were not on the internet). Then, they later decided these were expensive to store, more complicated to use for election judges, and some people--particularly the elderly I would hazard--didn't understand or like them.
Now, most people vote in person by paper optical marks ballots. Fill in the circle with the ballpoint pen provided to you. I believe hand-counting the ballots would take too long.