I hear you. And we agree on most of it. I think the the comparison of our election to third world countries is unfair. The pandemic caused the surge in mail in voting. Politics created the issues that you brought up, IMO.
And like you pointed out, there are best practices already out there if we can stop with politicizing the election vote counting process. People are even claiming that the party of the state governments is driving the fairness of the process. That is an insult to my 83 year old Mom who until this year because of covid worked as a volunteer in almost every election in her precinct for the last fifty years.

BKB