AP election night report to include live webcast
The Associated Press will offer its comprehensive election night
results during the news agency's first continuous online live
video stream.
"Big Issue: Election Results" will stream starting at 7 p.m. ET on AP's
Online Video Network, which distributes the news agency's acclaimed
video content to some 2,000 Web sites of newspapers, broadcasters and
other customers throughout the U.S.
Originating from AP's Washington bureau and co-hosted by Jessica
Weinstein and the AP's Sagar Meghani, the live webcast will
include AP Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier, AP political reporters
and editors discussing the returns, along with updates on congressional
races and live reports from the campaign headquarters of Sen. Barack
Obama and Sen. John McCain. (Users can be directed to OVN's video
stream on Nov. 4 by going to: http://www.ap.org.)
The program will also feature 10 now-undecided voters from around
the country who will explain which presidential candidate they chose
and why.
The 10 voters have been part of the widely cited AP-Yahoo! News poll,
which for the past year has tracked the attitudes and opinions of a
group of more than 2,000 Americans to see how their political views
evolve over the course of the presidential campaign.
In these final weeks of the campaign, the Online Video Network is
profiling the 10 individuals and sharing their views on such big issues
as the economy, Iraq/Afghanistan, energy and health care. (OVN's "Big
Issue" reports and related interactive content can be found at: http://www.ap.org/
"On a night when there will be plenty of media choices, we will present
AP's comprehensive election results in a unique Internet-friendly way
that will include real-time results, along with lively discussion and
analysis from AP's top political reporters, in the first live streaming
program produced by the AP," said Kevin Roach, the acting head of AP
Domestic Broadcast News Operations.
Meanwhile, AP once again will be the only news organization on election night
collecting the vote for the media and delivering it to newspapers and
broadcasters.
"We recognize that this is a once in a quarter century election,"
said Michael Oreskes, AP Managing Editor for U.S. News. "Through the
course of the year we have dug deeply into the dynamics of race and
gender and economic fears that are suffusing the electorate. Our
pre-election AP-Yahoo! News poll assessing the impact of racial
attitudes on the electorate is being cited as the prime source on the
issue this year. We plan to carry this work into our preparations for
election night."
The more than 500 AP reporters, editors, videographers, technical
support personnel and other staffers involved in covering the
presidential, congressional and state elections and counting the votes
will be joined and assisted on Nov. 4 by an army of 4,600 local
reporters, known as stringers, who will fan out across the country to
collect vote results from county clerks and phone them into four
regional election tabulation centers -- two in Spokane, Wash., a third
at AP headquarters in Manhattan and a fourth in Brooklyn.
In addition, results in as many as a dozen states will come to the AP
directly from their secretaries of state via electronic feeds, though
even in those states AP will assign its own stringers to the bigger
counties to speed up the tally.
At the four vote-entry centers, all numbers will be filtered through
the AP's rigorous system of checks, verification and expert staff
analyses before they are entered into AP's computer election system and
distributed by satellite or the Internet to AP member newspapers, the
TV networks, other broadcasters, Web sites and additional customers.
The individual results are updated thousands of times during the night
as returns come in, the first of them shortly after 6 p.m. ET from
Kentucky. The count will continue well into Wednesday, and in some
cases later in the week.
"Counting the vote gets more complicated every year, with more and more
ballots cast before election day, and the long-overdue
assurance that everyone have the opportunity to vote, even if their
registration is not apparent at the polling place," said Tom Jory, AP
Director of Election Tabulations. "We've been researching for months
now absentee and early voting regulations and procedures, which can
differ from state to state, so that our reporters in each of the
country's roughly 4,600 counties, cities and towns where votes are
tabulated know exactly what to expect on election night.
We'll know how many votes are registered in each locality covered, and
how they voted in previous elections, so that we can spot and check
possible errors or inconsistencies before the numbers are entered into
our reporting system. As always, we will work hard to provide members
and customers with fast, thorough and above all, accurate returns on
election night."
Oreskes said, "The AP and its partners have prepared as much as humanly possible for the many potential twists and outcomes. Our election night team, headed by David Pace, Washington News Editor for Technology and Special Projects, has been expanded to ensure the decision made by AP vote analysts and State Bureau Chiefs are checked and double-checked."
The AP has counted votes and declared winners every four years since Zachary Taylor was elected president in 1848. Following the demise of the Voter News Service after the 2002 off-year elections, the AP became the sole source of returns for all media, starting with the 2004 General Election.
For a more detailed description of how AP covers the 2008 election,
go to http://www.ap.org/
Contact: Jack Stokes