I’ve worked in the industry, so just adding some extra info, as I agree with you that the ticket system is not really less tracked than other systems, just differently tracked:

Lottery tickets don’t “fall off of trucks” or get “lost in the mail” because they aren’t valid for redemption until they’re activated at the POS terminal of a licensed store, and the lottery company knows which store receives each ticket roll, because they are shipped to known locations with tracking numbers and delivery verification and/or delivered in person by lottery employees. Even the rolls of blank lottery ticket receipt paper have different serial numbers every few inches, and it’s forbidden by policy to swap receipt paper between stores. All of these things are audited both regularly and randomly by state lottery officials.