AP to Provide Sole National Vote Count on Election Night

By: Determined to avoid a repeat of high-profile failures in 2000 and 2002, television networks will rely on new systems on Nov. 2 to help project election winners and analyze why voters made their choices, and they have turned to The Associated Press to count the vote for them.

The six news organizations that have formed the National Election Pool -- ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and the AP -- say they're confident things will go better this time, based on test runs and the experience of people involved.

The networks blamed Voter News Service, the company they had formed to count votes and conduct exit polls, for faulty data that led to the wrong calls in 2000. VNS tried to rebuild its system, but it broke down on election night 2002 and failed to provide usable exit polling information. VNS was then disbanded.

This time, the news organizations contracted with two veteran polling companies -- Mitofsky International and Edison Media Research -- to conduct exit polls. They agreed that the AP -- which has been tallying votes in elections since 1848 -- would be their sole source for vote counts, and the news cooperative has significantly beefed up its system in response.

The TV networks said they would be careful projecting winners after prematurely declaring Florida, and the 2000 election, for George W. Bush. (The AP did not declare Bush the winner on election night). The election wasn't ultimately determined for weeks after vote recounts and court fights.

Each of the organizations will use data provided by NEP to make its own projections election night. The organizations also have promised, for the first time in a presidential election, not to call states that span two time zones until all of the polling places have closed.

"We're just going to really, really be cautious," said Marty Ryan, Fox News Channel's executive producer for political coverage. "When we think we have it, we'll wait a few minutes and look again. Then we'll wait a few minutes and look again."

Both the exit polls and vote counts worked with no serious problems during the 2004 primaries and in stress tests, network officials said. Full dress rehearsals will be conducted on Oct. 23 and 30.

Four years ago, the networks relied on VNS for its count of the actual votes and used the AP's vote-counting as a backup. Now, the AP will go it alone.

The AP will have stringers calling in results from each of the nation's 4,600 counties. Hundreds of people will be assigned to input the information into computers, and others will monitor the systems to guard against problems. In all, a total of about 5,500 people will be working on AP's vote count on election night.

"We have real confidence in the reliability of the AP's vote count," said Kathleen Carroll, AP senior vice president and executive editor. "We also have enormous confidence in the journalists in the field and the bureau chiefs who will be using the data and their experience when they call winners in the race."

The AP relied on that experience on election night 2000 to resist calling the election for Bush, despite enormous pressure after the networks had made their projections.

Most of the AP election night staff has done the job before, said Tom Jory, the cooperative's director of elections tabulations. The AP also has built in new system redundancies to protect against computer or telephone system failures, he said.

Precautions are being taken to guard against human error as well. Using past elections as a guide, the AP's computer system is designed to spit out a warning if figures are entered that are significantly at odds with expected patterns -- just to make sure the numbers are rechecked.

"The AP has a long history of doing these things in general," said Dan Merkle, ABC News decision desk director. "With these other improvements, we feel very confident in the AP."