Why has The Associated Press been counting votes and proclaiming winners in US elections since the mid-19th century? Because the Founding Fathers didn’t set up a national control center for vote counting, and the states do it all a little differently.
So every US election night, The Associated Press counts the country’s votes, counting millions of ballots and determining which candidates have won their race. It has been that way since 1848, when the AP announced the election of Zachary Taylor as president.
Here’s the overview of the AP’s role in the election races:
HOW DID THE AP GET THIS JOB?
In fact, no one wanted to wait weeks to find out who had won the election.
The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College — a series of state elections to elect the president — to empower states in terms of their own electoral processes. But they have not created a centralized entity to count every citizen’s vote, unlike other democracies.
Instead, each state sets its own voting rules, laws and procedures, including when polling stations close, meaning the counting doesn’t happen all at once.
“Once we break it down into 50 parts, with 50 sets of rules, it’s a big job to collect all of that,” said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. “Especially if you want to get a timely report.”
News organizations themselves began counting votes, including the AP, which Stephen Ohlemacher, editor of the AP Election Ordinance, said began with “our own version of the Pony Express,” gathering votes from faraway areas in the 1848 election. As technology evolved, so did that process, with AP eventually forwarding votes by teletype to centralized race-calling operations on the East Coast.
Even in general elections, states used to vote on different days, until the advanced technology of knowing how other places had voted led to the practice of a single election day.
American television networks began making their own analyzes in the 1960 race between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, examining data and naming the winners one state at a time.
AP now uses a network of thousands of stringers and polling station workers who take feeds, scrape official state websites for data and electronically count votes across the country.
There is a national electoral agency, the Federal Election Commission, that regulates certain aspects of federal elections, such as administering and enforcing federal campaign finance laws and federal campaign financing. But the FEC does not monitor election results, laws or vote counting.
HAVE THERE BEEN PROBLEMS?
Yes. In 1948, the Chicago Daily Tribune ran the famous “Dewey Defeats Truman” front page when early numbers made it seem like Thomas Dewey was leading the way. The tide turned, and President Harry S. Truman defied polls by taking an upset victory.
In 2000, the major TV stations and the AP called Florida for Democrat Al Gore, largely dependent on Election Day. When the votes were counted, everyone changed course. The networks stated that Republican George W. Bush had carried the state, only to later withdraw that decision.
The AP waited to make the second call and found the race too close. More than a month later, a 5-4 US Supreme Court halted a recount, closing Bush’s narrow win.
“It was a very tense situation,” said Ohlemacher. “Sometimes the hardest thing is not to call.”
By two decades later, the The process of AP had evolved furtherand in 2020, the AP was 99.9% accurate in all race calls it made and perfect at proclaiming winners in the presidential and congressional races in every state.
DOES EVERYONE WANT TO CHANGE THIS?
There was criticism after the controversial 2020 presidential election, who saw challenges to the results of then-President Donald Trump and his allies in a number of states where he lost. After the AP and major networks declared the presidential race for Democrat Joe Biden, Trump tweeted, “Since when is the Lamestream Media calling who our next president will be?”
Touting unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud in the days following the election, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani pointed out that the media has no official role in deciding who becomes US president.
That’s true, but it doesn’t seem like there are any major steps to change that system.
And while control of the US House and Senate contested during this year’s midterm elections, the lack of a presidential election on the agenda could allay concerns about the role of the media, Edmonds said.
“However, the question of who will control the House or Senate is almost rising to the level of who is elected president,” he said.
THERE ARE STILL FORMALITIES AFTER COUNTS AND CALLS
Winners may have been called and concessions may or may not have been made, but the voting itself is over when polling stations close on Election Day. There is still more work to be done as local election officials count and verify the results through the recruitment and certification process.
That means race calls are made before the results are official. But the AP will only announce a winner if it is certain that the candidate leading the way in the count cannot be caught.
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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP
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Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-selections to learn more about the issues and factors involved in the 2022 midterm elections.
Follow AP’s coverage of the election at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections