Counting the votes

Got this a few moments ago -- thought you may find it useful

This comes from the Associated Press

On Tuesday, Nov. 2, some 100 million Americans will step into the voting
booth. Collectively, they will make decisions that will determine who
governs the United States for the next four years. Cumulatively, they
will elect one president, 11 governors, 34 senators, 435
representatives, and nearly 6,000 legislators, judges and other state
officeholders - as well as decide on a variety of economic and social
issues on ballots across the country.

The Associated Press has been counting the vote since its founding in
1848, when Zachary Taylor of the Whig Party defeated Democrat Lewis
Cass. This year, for the first time in decades, AP will be the only news
organization collecting the vote for the media and delivering it to
newspapers and broadcasters, including the television networks. It will
be delivered in a variety of formats, by satellite and online.

The AP is the world's oldest and largest newsgathering organization,
providing content to more than 15,000 news outlets with a daily reach of
1 billion people around the world. Its multimedia services are
distributed by satellite and the Internet to more than 120 nations.

Here's an explanation of how the AP will provide results in 2004 with
the speed and accuracy on which its members and subscribers have learned
to rely.

Q: How does the vote count differ this time?

A: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and AP chose to disband Voter
News Service - a POOL created in 1964 to collect election results, which
was broadened in the early 1990s to conduct exit polls - following
highly publicized failures in 2000 and 2002. The news organizations
created the National Election Pool (NEP), and contracted with two
veteran pollsters to conduct exit surveys. The networks turned to the AP
for the job of vote counting. In the past, the participating news
organizations received raw vote numbers from both VNS and the AP, and
used one as a check against the accuracy of the other. Now they will
rely on AP - the world's oldest and largest news cooperative - alone.

This year also marks the debut also of a new exit poll operation. AP is
part of the National Election Pool, a consortium with the networks. NEP
has hired two firms - Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International -
to conduct these polls, which are so crucial in allowing AP to call
landslide races early and to be able to tell in depth what was on the
voters' minds. These firms polled successfully in the Kentucky and
Mississippi governors' races in 2003, and throughout the early
presidential primary season in 2004.

The networks and the AP will have access to the same data but each
election operation will independently make its own call on all races.
For the first time in a presidential race, the AP and its partners will
refrain from making a call in any particular state until all the polls
have closed.

Q: What is involved in AP's election coverage?

A: From before dawn on Nov. 2 and continuing for the next 20 hours or
more, thousands of people will be working fulltime on behalf of the AP
to report the election. From exit poll interviewers to exit poll
analysts, from vote count stringers to vote entry clerks, from bureau
chiefs in the states to supervisors in New York and Washington - all
will be part of a precisely calibrated plan designed to report election
results accurately.

Q: How will the votes be counted?

A: By 5 p.m. local time on Tuesday the first of nearly 5,000 stringers
will have started to report to county election centers. When the first
polls close, at 6 p.m. in Indiana and Kentucky, they'll be ready to
start phoning in the raw vote as it is counted. They'll place their
calls to one of AP's 16 vote collection centers, the largest of which is
the Western Election Center in Spokane, Wash.

A total of 450 vote entry clerks will punch in the numbers on a computer
screen and feed them onto the state and national election tables that
will be seen in the newsrooms of AP's members.

The clerks are encouraged to ask questions to ensure accuracy. They'll
ask the stringers whether there are problems in their county, question
votes and precincts if results look suspect, and make sure that those
working around them are asking questions, too.

The vote count and entry operation will continue in full swing across
the 50 states and the District of Columbia all night, tapering down
about 4 a.m. Wednesday morning and then picking up again at 9 a.m. so AP
can chase down the final results and obtain 100 percent of the votes.

Q: Besides counting the votes, what else will AP be doing to in its
election coverage?

A: Even before the first polls have opened at 6 a.m., the first of more
than 1,500 exit poll interviewers hired by the National Election Pool's
two polling firms will report for duty at randomly selected precincts.

In recent years, more voting has been taking place before Election Day,
so this year the exit poll operation is being supplemented with
telephone surveys conducted by the National Election Pool in 13 states
where absentee or early voting is most popular. By 10 a.m., the
interviewers will begin calling in with the first of three reports they
will file during the day. More than 300 operators will be stationed at
phone centers to record their data. After processing and quality
control, the first wave of data will be released in the early afternoon
to AP and its exit poll partners.

At AP, two teams will look at the numbers. A 'decision desk' will
determine which races might be called at the time polls close. An
analysis team will be examining the demographics, issues and other
factors that made a difference in the elections.

Q: What happens at AP while the votes are coming in?

A: AP's state bureau chiefs are armed with on-the-ground knowledge of
their territory that no other national news organization can match. They
will be working with the 'decision desk' in Washington to determine when
the races in their state can be called. That team, headed by the
Washington bureau chief, has the final signoff on all top of the ticket
calls, including president. It was their decision in 2000 not to follow
the pack and declare George W. Bush the victor in Florida on election
night

Q: Based on election history, what is the best 'guess estimate' for when
the presidential race will be called by AP?

A: The AP will be working diligently to determine when the race can be
called, but given the apparent closeness in so many battleground states,
it's difficult to predict when. An earliest estimate is sometime between
11 p.m. and 3 a.m., as the vote totals accumulate.

Q: What safeguards have been introduced to protect the vote collection
system should problems arise from human or technical error?

A: A series of steps have been taken to safeguard the process, involving
both technology and people. AP has built into the system a series of
triggers to set off alerts in case of discrepancies or apparent
inconsistencies with previous voting history. Historical data has been
programmed in about registered and actual voters and past voting
patterns. If a clerk enters numbers that show a significant disparity
from expected patterns, for example, a popup box appears on his or her
screen that summons a supervisor to intervene. There are also coping
mechanisms for technical problems. If one or more of AP's servers goes
down, the system automatically fails over to backup servers; if an
entire technical center loses power, the system seamlessly swings over
to an alternate site. These 'failovers' have been tested repeatedly
during dry runs that have been going on every day in the month running
up until the election.

Q: What about safeguards involving people?

A: Layers of human expertise have been added to protect the process. For
instance, each state has at least one 'chase' person whose job is to do
nothing but pursue missing vote reports. They will scan for counties
that haven't been heard from and call the stringers. If they can't find
the stringers, they'll go directly to the county clerk or to AP members
to get the numbers. Also, a team of 24 people in an office in
Sacramento, Calif., will do nothing but monitor the Web sites that many
secretaries of states are using to post vote totals. They'll be
comparing those numbers with the AP figures and making sure AP is up to

Re: Counting the votes

(since this isn't a 'political' type thread, more in the lines of 'informational', I'll post)

That is a great article Don, very informative. I was wondering what they would do different to avoid any mis-reporting this election. Still, I don't think we'll have an answer tonight.