WASHINGTON (AP) — There is no easier way to count votes than counting the votes.

The Associated Press has been counting national, state and local election results since 1848. Broadly speaking, the process is the same today as it was then: Vote count reporters compile local election results as soon as they close the ballot boxes and then present them. those results for the AP to collate, verify and report.

This year, AP will count the votes in about 5,000 contested races across the United States, from the presidency and Congress to state legislatures and ballot measures.

The United States does not have a national body that collects and publishes election results. Elections are administered locally by thousands of offices, following standards set by states. In many cases, the states themselves do not even provide updated tracking of election results.

The PA plays a role in collecting and standardizing results.

The AP vote count fills a gap by gathering information that would otherwise not be available online for days or weeks after an election or would be scattered across hundreds of local websites. Without national standards or consistent expectations across states, it also ensures that data is in a standard format, uses standard terms, and undergoes rigorous quality control.

Data collection efforts begin when Americans begin voting, which in almost every election means well before Nov. 5 of this year.

The AP is asking state and local election administrators for information on the number of absentee ballots requested and the number of early votes cast as soon as voting begins. (You can track those numbers here.) These figures do not contain results, which are not published until after the polls close, but they can provide valuable information about people who voted before Election Day.

The big effort begins once the polls close, when roughly 4,000 AP vote-counting reporters fan out to precincts and county election offices. An AP vote count reporter will be stationed at nearly every county election office on Election Day, as well as in key cities and towns, collecting data directly from the source.

Many vote count reporters have substantial experience collecting accurate vote count information for the AP. In the most recent general election, about half of them had worked for the AP for at least 10 years. Hundreds more have experience collecting vote count data in primary and general elections.

They work with local election officials to collect results directly from the counties or precincts where they are first counted and collected and submit them, by phone or electronically, as soon as they are available. The results are transmitted to the AP vote registration center, which employs an additional 800 to 900 people.

Because many states and counties display election results on websites, the AP monitors those sites and enters the results into the same system. The vote entry center also receives results information directly from election officials where they are provided and uses automated tools to collect results from official government websites.

In many cases, counties will report more votes as they count ballots overnight. The AP continually updates its count as these results are released. In a general election, the AP will make up to 21,000 racial updates per hour.

Errors can occur, such as testing data being accidentally posted on a state’s website or a journalist accidentally transposing two candidates’ vote totals. Having multiple sources helps the AP discover where these errors occur and often prevents them from being published.

Sometimes counting errors need to be corrected, such as when a county corrected its data or someone accidentally entered an extra zero. In some cases, that can cause a drop in the total number of votes counted when the problem is identified and fixed.

That’s why it’s helpful to have multiple sources of updates.

On general election nights, AP may have up to five or six potential sources of election results in each county and can choose between them depending on which is the most up-to-date and accurate. These multiple sources not only serve as backups for each other; They also provide verification to help ensure that reported vote totals are correct.

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