The disconnect is that in most of the world we only vote for one or two candidates on a ballot. In America you vote for everything from the president to the dog catcher on one ballot.
While I think of it, the USA and UK should both stop holding votes on working days. That is nuts! Do what Australia does and vote on a Saturday and make it compulsory.
Are you sure? The last time I voted in Germany they gave me five ballots (EU, state, county, city, district), some with dozens of candidates - per party. I had dozens of votes to give.
I'm Australian, that screenshot is from the State election in South Australia, it is an example of how the Upper House ballot paper looks, it is similar in my state New South Wales.
The vertical columns (labelled as Group A to E in screenshot) divide up the political parties. The Greens will be one column, Labor Party another, Liberal Party another column and so on.
There are two horizontal rows separated by a thick line.
You can choose to either vote "above the line" or "below the line" but not both methods.
Above the line is used if you would like to vote based upon the wishes of a political party and below the line is used for "finer grained" voting for individual persons.
For example the Labor party might have 3 Candidates "Fred", "Mary" and "Bob" if I vote above the line I can put a 1 next to the Labor party and then the Labor party's wishes will determine how my vote is distributed.
Or if I Vote below the line I must number 12 different people in the order I want them to be chosen. So I could number Bob from Labor first, Peggy from the Greens second, then Fred from Labor third and so on and I exert exact control over how I want my preferences to be distributed.
edit:
Our elections are staggered, The State parliament is elected on different day to the Federal Parliament, which is different to Local City Council elections.
Believe me, we've been aware that this is a non-bug feature for a long time.
The Tuesday law was passed in 1845. Instead of changing it, many legislators are pushing in the opposite direction: trying to selectively suppress their opponents' votes further. If it hurts them more than us, it's a worthy goal!
While I think of it, the USA and UK should both stop holding votes on working days. That is nuts! Do what Australia does and vote on a Saturday and make it compulsory.