The root cause of a lot of this is how complex ballots are in American elections. For comparison, this is what a ballot looks like in a Canadian federal election:

http://www.capyouthvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ballo...

The reason ours are simpler is because the elections are simpler: we just elect our local member of parliament. At the federal and provincial levels, that's the only decision to make in an election. We don't vote for senators or judges or any other offices at these levels. Instead, these are appointed by parliament.

The municipal elections have the most options because there we elect mayors, city councillors and school board trustees. But they're still just paper "put an X next to the name" ballots that are manually counted.