The US voting system vs France and the UK

Ismaine and Robin discuss voting systems. Whereas the American system is complex, non-transparent, and dependent on black-box technology, leading to arguments about fake ballots and electoral corruption, the systems of other countries, including France and the UK, are very simple and never seem to generate such arguments.

Why can’t we Americans use a simpler “technology” that has been effective for decades – if not centuries: a pencil, a paper ballot and a box? Why can’t we use real people to count real ballots with real marks on them, overseen by anyone who wants to watch, with their work checked by others?

Given that the cause of voter and voting fraud (or at least the appearance of the same) is so obvious and easy to eliminate (just by learning from the much less corruptible systems of other Western democracies or even simpler systems from America’s own past), one would be forgiven for thinking that we Americans do it the way we do because the people organizing our elections want to keep it as corruptible as it is…