When ballots were counted by hand we had reliable results by midnight.
Honest elections don’t take so long.
“...he was a liar and killer from the start.”
You could still have cheating, but the schemes were fairly obvious. Kennedy-Nixon 1960 comes to mind. Also, “Landslide Lyndon” Johnson “winning” a U.S. Senate seat in the 1940s.
How does Florida have results, no problems counting 7.5M ballots have results by 7pm while these other states are going take days and weeks? Answer cheating.
No, we had exit polls back then. It was all projection being sold as fact. They just got lucky in that they were mostly right.