TEGUCIGALPA, Dec 17 - The U.S. Department of State demanded that Honduras' National Electoral Council immediately begin a manual count of ballots from last month's presidential election, which has been stalled by protests and wrangling over alleged fraud.The electoral council has blamed protests for preventing it from starting the manual ‍count of ​hundreds of thousands of ballots that it said showed inconsistencies and were therefore excluded from ‍the initial tally.