Yes, you are right in practice re mistakes but the priority for a count must be to get it right and the suggestion that people aren’t more likely to get it wrong because they’re tired is counter-intuitive.

I mean this all in a comradely fashion because ultimately:
a) this matters not one jot and
b) no one outside our small word really cares

As for accuracy, to quote a post of mine:

“In theory this sounds a good point, but in practice my experience of count errors – and there have been some real howlers that I have seen in person or dealt with at the end of a phone line – is that they have very little to do with tired people making mistakes.

“In practice the big factor is how well or badly the count is being run – and that’s to do with issues like planning, the quality of the people running the show and their levels of interest in running a good operation. Being tired isn’t the issue.”

( http://www.libdemvoice.org/saving-general-election-night-roundup-of-reaction-16084.html )

There isn’t (yet, perhaps) a trade-off in terms of space between sports coverage and news.

I don’t think Londoners were unaware that Boris Johnson was Mayor of London by the Monday morning, despite the result being announced at 10pm on Friday night and if they didn’t know about it on that very day, I can’t find any evidence that it had any impact on faith in elections or awareness of Boris.

I would return to the central point: do the advantages of having early morning news bulletins on a Friday reporting election results outweigh the costs of tired (expensively paid) counters getting it wrong?