AP Will Be Sole Source of Vote Count

[maddezmom]

NEW YORK - News organizations will be relying on The Associated Press for a quick and accurate count of votes cast in Tuesday's elections, from top of the ticket races like president, Senate and governor, down through state legislature.



The AP will use a network of nearly 5,000 stringers, who will be stationed at county election centers in every state. They will phone in results to one of several vote entry centers, where clerks will enter the numbers into AP's computerized tabulation system.


Those returns, from about 6,000 races in all, will then be delivered to newspapers, Web sites and broadcasters, including the television networks, in a variety of formats.

more: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&ncid=696&e=1&u=/ap/20041101/ap_on_el_pr/ap_vote_count

[POed_Ex_Repub]

1. Nothing like having a free press... n/t

[genius]

4. The AP is Republican. Where is Terry MacAulliffe?

[BootinUp]

2. interesting, thanks -eom

[Dancing_Dave]

3. Won't this info be available online?

County election centers must have some kind of access to the internet...

[Orangepeel]

5. yes. and every candidate will have someone at the SOE offices

AP may be the "sole source" to news organizations, but plenty of people (including lawyers) will be on hand to witness the counts

[progressivebydesign]

6. All I want to know is WHERE is Bush's cousin working this TIME!

Was his name, John Ellis? The guy on Fox that called the election for Bush. WHERE is he working this time??

[Zorra]

7. Oh yeah. This guy:

One Call Too Many?
NEW YORK, Nov. 14, 2000

CBS) A Fox News consultant involved in making judgments about presidential "calls" on Election Night admits he was in touch with George W. Bush and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush by telephone several times during the evening, but denies having broken any rules.

Fox is considering disciplinary action against the consultant, John Ellis, who is a cousin to Bush and a former Boston Globe columnist who stopped writing about the campaign for the paper, citing family "loyalty" to Bush.
snip----
At 2:16 a.m. on Wednesday morning, Fox became the first network to call Florida for Bush. Minutes later, CBS, ABC, NBC, and CNN made the same call.
snip----
The New Yorker magazine reported that Ellis "relay early vote counts as they showed up on his screens." Ellis admits to having been in touch with George W. and Jeb Bush several times during the evening, but denies having violated VNS rules and Fox policy.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/11/14/politics/main249357.shtml

Another republican candidate for independent investigations and some substantial prison time?

[LiberalFighter]

20. Yes it is John Ellis

Florida Governor JEB Bush's real name is John Ellis Bush

[loudsue]

8. BBV ALERT!!!! THIS IS TERRIBLE NEWS!!!

AP is a Very Right Wing/Repuke Owned shill for bush, and they can change the tallies all they want by computer as the votes come in!!

Read www.votescam.com

They have a bunch of articles that show how the totals can be messed up (and HAVE BEEN messed up, historically) via the modems that send the totals in. All that this will do is make stealing the election a one-stop-shopping spree.

Excuse me while I melt into a major panic attack! This has me more than afraid.

<loudsue takes a deep breath, and adjusts tinfoilhat>

Ok...people are watching the elections. Surely they'll know that AP will gerrymander the totals. I only hope each modem that is sending their totals to AP has a back-up of their actual totals for auditing purposes.

:kick::kick:

[Digit]

37. AP needs to butt out!

I don't want their damn hands on any part of this election.

[leftchick]

47. sue I can only hope that the honest election officials....

and I know there are still very many in this country, will notice if the totals they hand over to AP are altered.

[Minstrel Boy]

9. Remember: AP already reported Bush won

Somehow this AP story got on the wire a few weeks ago:

[Nordic]

11. holy shit!

That just sent a nice knot to the pit of my stomach

Where the hell is that from?

[Minstrel Boy]

14. here's the story behind it:

TV station reports that Bush has been elected President
WBAY TV in Green Bay, Wisconsin is running an AP article reporting that Bush has won the election, weeks before the election is to take place.

AP is now saying the article was a "test article" (WTF?) that was "inadvertently" picked up by WBAY. Now, I've been a freelance writer/journalist for quite awhile, as have you, but I've never heard of writing "test articles" in advance, other than advance obituaries for celebrities. Have you? Furthermore, I Googled '"test article" journalism' and came up with nada.

But the TV station's web master explained:

We use an automated system for Associated Press national news, politics, science, entertainment, etc. If you see how much news we have on the site, you'll understand why we use automation (I am a department of one). If we did not have this system, there would simply be too many gaps in how often the entire site is updated.

The Associated Press tests about 4 times a week for a month prior to an election to help TV stations and newspapers make sure their publishing systems are working properly (yes, I see the irony). The AP's numbers are completely random with every test; if this error happened yesterday or tomorrow it just as easily could have declared Senator John Kerry or even Ralph Nader the winner.
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/07/tv_station_reports_t.html

[Name removed]

41. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[MIMIC]

25. OK...what the fuck is up with that AP story?

I've never seen it before.

[madfloridian]

10. And the networks are doing the exit polls.

I have such great confidence. :shrug:

[Nordic]

12. I don't see how this is anything other than terrible news

:shrug:

[NVMojo]

13. please tell me this is an enormous attempt at humor!!!

[kysrsoze]

15. Sheesh, which is worse, AP or Reuters? Either way, not good.

[Junkdrawer]

16. AP, Fox, CNN et al will be doing the exit polling...

Networks to test new exit polling system

NEW YORK (AP) — 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. (Q&A: How the AP counts votes)
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.

Still, 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.

"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."

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.

...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/2004-10-13-election-network_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA

:( Looks like they won't make THAT mistake again...

[stickdog]

18. Yes. VNS's "wrong" call of Florida for Gore required Repukes to

force VNS to hire Betchel to fuck everything up in 2002 and finally disband completely so that all voting projections could be centralized through a single corporate news service giant.

All because VNS "embarrassingly" called Florida accurately.

[stickdog]

17. Thank God they got rid of those horrible exit polls!

Remember how much TROUBLE they caused when they correctly predicted Florida for Gore?

Thank God there's only ONE source for these numbers now because when you've just got one measure, it HAS to be right!

[Demeter]

19. I Want NPR to Be The One!

This is bogus.

[Zhade]

29. National Petroleum Radio? Fuck that.

They're pretty bad these days, too.

[Nordic]

21. his should scare the shit out of all of us

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

Q: What safeguards have been introduced to protect the vote collection system should problems arise from human or technical error?

A: A series of steps have been taken to safeguard the process, involving both technology and people. AP has built into the system a series of triggers to set off alerts in case of discrepancies or apparent inconsistencies with previous voting history. Historical data has been programmed in about registered and actual voters and past voting patterns. If a clerk enters numbers that show a significant disparity from expected patterns, for example, a popup box appears on his or her screen that summons a supervisor to intervene.

[KelleyKramer]

22. This is just incredible

They are doing it right in front of our face.

Its almost like the old Soviet Union. Or worse, like some cheap tin-horn 3rd world banana republic.

Kerry is going to have to win by at least 5 million votes to have a 'theft proof' victory.

Wonder how this makes us look to the rest of the civilized world.

[Zhade]

31. Ah. So when a record number of people turn out to vote against b*sh...

...their votes will simply be deemed an "irregularity".

Gotcha.

To the streets, my bitches!

</Chappelle>

[Nordic]

32. egg-fuggin-ZACKLY

[Zhade]

33. That's some treasonous bullshit right there.

Disenfranchisement, easy as the click of a mouse! Ain't secretive, proprietary Republican-funded technology GRAND, boys and girls?

This is going to get extremely ugly.

[Shadder]

35. That's some paranoid bullshit right there.

[Zhade]

40. I've been paranoid for the last 4 years. I've also been right.

Hard to ignore a track record like that.

[sangh0]

42. So how are the Twin Cities doing?

You said they were going to be nuked.

Some track record.

And BTW, you're wrong again. The AP is NOT going to be counting votes.

[Zhade]

49. Liar. I NEVER said that. Try to find the post.

You're mistaking me for someone else. Big surprise, considering how often you lie, attack, and distort.

[Shadder]

46. Last 4 years has nothing to do with this.

How hard is this to understand. AP is NOT counting the votes. They are only reporting the official results.

[leftchick]

48. I agree, they can't alter the results they report....

without it being noticed. I do wonder why it is being handled this way though.

[shance]

52. Who are you to define what is *treasonous* and what is *paranoid*?

How do you know?

[shance]

53. Read this: Could the AP Rig the Election?

Could the Associated Press (AP) Rig the Election?

by Lynn Landes 10/22/04



The Associated Press (AP) will be the sole source of raw vote totals for the major news broadcasters on Election Night. However, AP spokesmen Jack Stokes and John Jones refused to explain to this journalist how the AP will receive that information. They refused to confirm or deny that the AP will receive direct feed from voting machines and central vote tabulating computers across the country. But, circumstantial evidence suggests that is exactly what will happen.



And what can be downloaded can also be uploaded. Computer experts say that signals can travel both to and from computerized voting machines through wireless technology, modems, and even simple electricity. Computer scientists have long warned that computer voting is an invitation to vote fraud and system failure. An examination of Diebold election software by several computer scientists, including Dr. Avi Rubin and his staff, proved that secret backdoors can be built into computer programs that allow votes to be easily manipulated without detection.



But, can't the AP be trusted? Isn't it an objective non-partisan news organization? Some say no. The AP is batting for a Bush presidency.




Who is the AP? The Associated Press was founded in 1848. It is a not-for-profit news cooperative, some would say ‘monopoly’, that rakes in about $500 million dollars a year. The AP is owned by its 1,500 U.S. daily newspaper members. Their board of directors is elected by voting ‘bonds’. However, it is not clear who controls the bonds. AP spokespeople would not give out information on who sits on their board, however AP leadership appears quite conservative.



Burl Osborne, chairman of the AP board of directors, is also publisher emeritus of the conservative The Dallas Morning News, a newspaper that endorsed George W. Bush in the last election. Kathleen Carroll, senior vice president and executive editor of AP, was a reporter at The Dallas Morning News before joining AP. Carroll is also on the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME)’s 7-member executive committee. The APME "works in partnership with AP to improve the wire service's performance," according to their website. APME vice president, Deanna Sands, is managing editor of the ultra conservative Omaha World Herald newspaper, whose parent company owns the largest voting machine company in the nation, Election Systems and Software (ES&S).



Many Americans believe that polling organizations and the broadcasters will raise the red flag on any election shenanigans. But others have their doubts.



The Collier brothers, authors of the book, VoteScam: The Stealing of America, wrote about vote fraud and the role the news media and polls played. In 1970, Channel 7 in Miami projected with 100% accuracy (a virtual impossibility) the final vote totals on election day. When asked where they got their exit poll data, both Channel 3 & Channel 7 claimed that the League of Women Voters sent it in from the precincts. But, the League's local president tearfully denied it, saying, "I don't want to get caught up in this thing." The broadcasters then told the Colliers that a private contractor used the data from a single voting machine to project the winners, but the contractor said he got the data from a University of Miami professor, who in turn denied this. In the end, the news broadcasters appeared to have got the polling numbers out of thin air.


One thing is clear. The air will be thick with distrust and doubt on Election Night 2004.

[Shadder]

23. Whats the big deal?

All AP is doing is passing along the information as reported to them by the county and/or state to the other media outlets. It's not like they are the ones that are doing the actual counting.

If you don't want to get the information from them, fine, go to the each states Sec of State official vote result website and follow the kerry victory that way.

[Buford Pusser]

24. AP is trustworthy and proven

The AP, a nonprofit organization, gives as straight a news as you'll find, striving above all for fairness, accuracy, and balance -- long before a mockery was made of those tenets by FNC.

In fact, in the 2000 election, The Associated Press was alone among all the networks to not call Florida, or the presidency, for Bush. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/11/10/politics/main248524.shtml

That showed remarkable restraint (and great judgment) in an industry that places such a high premium on the scoop or being the first to say.

The AP instead waited until it could get it right, which didn't come till the Supreme Court handed down its opinion, which of course wasn't right (little "r") -- but that was hardly the AP's fault.

It's no coincidence, for example, that CBS's investigation of the Dan Rather report on Bush's AWOLness, is being co-headed by a former AP CEO.

So relax.

Buford Pusser

[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[info being]

34. Hmm, AP now has someone monitoring this board?

Newsflash, nothing you say will fool us. We know truth when we see it.

[Buford Pusser]

44. I hope you ain't responding to me

If you think I'm some sort of AP designee or monitor or proxy or anything, which I most assuredly am not, well then, I can see why you'd lapse into a hyper suspicion that the Associated Press, of all things, would cheat for Bush.

But perhaps I misunderstood your rather cryptic message.

1) were you referring to me?

2) do you think I was trying to "fool you"?

3) What is the truth that you say you see?

Buford Busser

[Orangepeel]

45. welcome to DU, Buford!

nice to have you aboard!

:hi:

[Buford Pusser]

50. Thanks, OrangePeel

That's much more cordial.

Thought I was on chronwatch.com for a minute there.

Buford Pusser

[nolabels]

54. Did you write satire in prior life also?

:D

[Roland99]

26. They're not counting the ballots...they're relaying the vote counts.

[kevin881]

28. exactly, everyone calm down.

[Shadder]

30. Seems to me like

we can find a lot of things to be worried about right now, but this is really not one of them.

[Digit]

38. ...any part they play is suspect.

Get em out of there!

[MIMIC]

36. That Associated Press webshot is phony

The electoral votes in the story only add up to 429.

[sangh0]

39. AP is NOT counting the votes

They're only reporting them.

[Brundle_Fly]

43. regardless

they have to weigh the fact that is their is a landslide for kerry and they even slightly look like they are biased, they will be pooched in the ability to report on anything in the future, their whole organization's future depends on getting it right.

and once again the allmighty dollar is their bottom line, they wont screw up.

Its the millions of other factors that have me freaked out.

[katinmn]

51. This doesn't sound right

AP has been doing these so-called "tests" with stories announcing Bush the winner for weeks now, that somehow end up live on news sites large and small.

[Chimpanzee]

55. They should use UPI.

It's been blessed by the holy reverend moonie.

[loudsue]

56. We're fucked. I hope Kerry & his team are on top of this!!

I'm so friggin tired of running into the neocons every time I try to get a peek at freedom. Each time, they slam the door shut.

:kick::kick: