> All of the other states and cities were able to get their ballots counted.

One has to be careful that comparisons are made between comparable entities. In this case, note that different states can begin processing absentee/mail-in votes at different times [0], so one state being able to handle absentee/mail-in vote processing without apparent incident does not necessarily say anything about how counting might progress in another state.

> Detroit, Philly, ..., Milwaukee

Absentee/mail-in vote processing/counting can only begin on Election Day.

> Atlanta, ..., Las Vegas

Signature verification can be performed upon receipt of the absentee/mail-in ballot, but actual counting can only start on Election Day

> Miami

Ballot verification/counting can start 22 days before Election Day

> or Cleveland, ..., or Cincinnati

Verification and scanning can occur before Election Day. Unclear whether "scanning" includes counting, or just how far ahead of time the process can start.

> or Iowa City

Affadavits may be reviewed the day before Election Day, but counting can only start on Election Day (and must be finished by 10 P.M. on Election Day)

> Or Dallas, ..., or Houston

Verification can be performed upon receipt. Jurisdictions with <= 100k people, counting starts on Election Day; for larger jurisdictions, counting can start at the end of the early voting by personal appearance period, which I think is 4 days before Election Day [1]

> or Nashville

Verification can be performed upon receipt, but counting can only start on Election Day.

So in short, some of the examples of cities that count "without incident" can conceivably do so because they have much more time to do so. Iowa City and Nashville are better comparisons, but that doesn't rule out some other factor that renders the comparison invalid.

> All of the other states and cities were able to get their ballots counted.

Do they actually have all their ballots counted, or do they simply not show up in news stories?

For example, Decision Desk HQ reports that Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia have >99% of their ballots in, while Michigan, Kentucky, Utah, Alabama, Nevada, California, and Washington all are reported to have >95% of their ballots in. So by those metrics, states in the first group are doing better than states in the second group, but some states in the second group get attention heaped upon them, while others seemingly pass under the radar.

New York is a particularly egregious example, with a reported 77.3-88.0% of its ballots in. And yet very little attention appears to be devoted to it.

(This assumes DDHQ's numbers are actually reasonable/accurate, of course)

> especially after one State senate race was already overturned in a manual recount, where they discovered 6,000 votes were cast to the wrong presidential party due to 'bugs' in the voting machine software

You seem to be mixing some stories.

From what I understand, the race whose results got reversed was for the Oakland County Board of Commissions [2]. The margin was 1127 votes.

The 6000 vote reversal was from Antrim county. The Michigan Secretary of State has put out a statement about that specific incident [3], where they claim that the error was due to human error, not software error (though it's not entirely unreasonable to say the software is not entirely blameless, as pointed out in [4] by a University of Michigan professor who claims to have looked into the incident [5]), and that no manual recount was involved.

[0]: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-t...

[1]: https://www.votetexas.gov/faq/early-voting.html

[2]: https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2020...

[3]: https://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,4670,7-127-93094-544676--,00....

[4]: https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/human-error-dom...

[5]: https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/...