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Those are some nice theories, but is there any evidence of a proven (or at least widely-considered) rigged election where the vote counting was slow?
I thought "results are withheld because people counting realize they need to stuff ballot boxes" was such a widely known trope of failed state elections in 3rd world, but I had to search for some examples and i was surprisingly difficult because google results are polluted by trumpbbrained US politics. Here is some example of dubious delays in final results or "amended" results I could find by scourging Wikipedia: Afghanistan 2014 and 2019, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Nigerian, early 20th century US and later.
In contrast, I don't think "long time to count votes" is a Bayesian evidence bit of fair process either: most European states have announced election results (considered fairly counted) quite quickly as long as I can remember.
You can filter google results from before a certain year. Add before:2019 or before:xxxx date to your search query and it will return results that have not been updated since that date.
This article seems relevant: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34641418
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You're probably reaching back to something like LBJ's Texas Senate race, where the candidates and their machines would hold counties in reserve to play against each other like trap cards, with each county having the margin needed to counter your opponent's reveal until they ran out.
Political lore is that this was SOP in statewide elections in Illinois, with the Daley machine in greater Chicago and the Republican machine in the rural south trying to delay releasing results until they knew how many votes they needed to steal. But that doesn't describe how the most famous rigged election in Illinois history (the 1960 Presidential election) went down - Kennedy was ahead of Nixon throughout the "count", and Cook County on average reported faster than the rest of the state.
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