Associated Press to be counting the votes tomorrow. NO SHIT!

who is going to be COUNTING THE VOTES tomorrow?

The associated press.

Yes, you heard that right, the AP is the sole entity telling the world who the next president is.

I've edited this headline because I've realized that it's worse than I thought it was -- they have it all set up so they are ACTUALLY COUNTING THE VOTES.

They have it set up so that if the votes come in in a way that differs from "expected results", a warning will go up and a supervisor will be called, alerted to the "discrepancy".

This scares the hell out of me and I think it should everyone.

This just came out TODAY, the day before the election.

Here is the Q&A page where they describe how they're doing it

http://www.ap.org/pages/about/whatsnew/whatsnew.html

Here is the contact info for the AP

http://www.ap.org/pages/contact/contact.html

Contact them any way you can, or any way you want. Let them know in no uncertain words that if they fuck with this election they are going to JAIL. We will hold them personally accountable and will follow through on this.

Say it like you mean it.

Here is a screenshot of the story they've already "accidentally" put out announcing a Bush "re-election"



Here is where I started a thread about this in GD2004

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1257431

I think this is hugely important.

I don't think the states have turned their vote-counting over to AP. This is to replace the failed VNS. It's funded by the news services to help them 'call' the election tomorrow. Granted, how the elections is called during the day can have an affect on turnout, but I don't believe they are doing the official counting of the ballots.

by stringers from the counties.

They will use this info in computer models to decide when a state can be "called."

Nordic is absolutely right that the campaigns should be concerned that a state will be called incorrectly (like John Ellis called Florida incorrectly in 2000).

But plenty of people will have access to actual vote totals which will be counted by employees of elections offices and supervised by representatives from the campaigns.

Supervisor of elections offices are swarming with people on election night. There are plenty of people there to check the vote totals. Now, if the machines make an error (like happened in one Florida county in 2000) those totals will be wrong. But that won't have anything to do with AP.

AP is not counting the votes for the election, just reporting vote counts for all news organizations.

The screen shot shows what journalists call "X copy." pre-written copy, so when the news happens they don't have to rewrite completely. there's probably another story "kerry won" that didn't get pusblihsed.

in these twitchy days though.

i don't think i'll sleep soundly until President Kerry is sworn in next January.

I'd love to be reassured, but so far I've heard nothing but "relax, it's not really happening the way AP says it is."

The exit polls in '00 showed that Gore won. Plain and simple, Gore won. The confusion arose later, when the FL fiasco unfolded, and Bush was eventually declared the winner. VNS took the blame, and was later disbanded because of their "error" in exit polling. If they had reported discrepancies early on in '00, Bush may not have been able to steal the election.

It sounds like they're actually counting the votes, and that's how they actually state it.

Why would a source like AP say "we are counting the votes" if they aren't counting the votes?

Sure, I'm twitchy, but why not?

We all know it's whoever counts the damn votes that decides the election.

The Constitution puts the responsibility for counting the votes on the states. I really doubt that ALL 50 states agreed to let AP handle this.

win......ao it was discredited!?!?!?!?!?!

and no exit polls in 2002 to check GA and other states complete turnaround from day before election polls

Hey, Nordic. Thanks for keeping of top of this issue. AP will be handling projections, not vote counting. You are correct to be suspicious, but I actually was somewhat reassured to learn that AP would be coodinating the calling of the election by the media.

I happened to see a tape of an interview by Bill Moyers with AP head Tom Curley a while back, and I was very impressed with what he had to say about the failures of the press and his committment to turning things around. He seemed to really get it about the duty of the press to fight government secrecy and manipulation of information.

PBS has a video and transcript online.

Bill Moyers talks to President and CEO of the Associated Press Tom Curley about a new press effort, led by him and others in the media business, to push for less secrecy in government. In a May 7th speech, Curley unveiled a plan for a "media advocacy center" to lobby for open government in Washington. "The government is pushing hard for secrecy," Curley said. "We must push back equally hard for openness."

http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/curley.html

Curley's speech at The Hays Press-Enterprise Lecture series last May may be of interest, as well.

http://www.ap.org/pages/about/whatsnew/hayspress.html

on edit- added link

I know I was freaking out about it, but nobody seemed to be telling me anything except "relax".

It sounded to me like the AP was actually doing all the totalling of the votes.