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Tag: Voting machines

  • Faster vote counts without machines? Unlikely.

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    Resurrecting longstanding complaints about how U.S. elections are run, President Donald Trump this week reiterated that he wants faster election results, but doesn’t want voting machines.

    In Aug. 18 remarks at the White House, Trump said that a forthcoming executive order will “end mail-in ballots” and change voting machines.

    Trump continued, “The machines, I mean, they say we’re going to have the results in two weeks. With paper ballots, you have the results that night.”

    This echoed Trump’s 2024 campaign promises to use only paper ballots and count all votes on election night.

    In an Aug. 18 Truth Social post, Trump said he is going to “lead a movement to get rid of” mail-in ballots and voting machines. 

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    We asked the White House to explain what types of machines Trump wants eliminated — such as vote tabulators — and whether he meant all brands or only certain ones. We also asked whether Trump intends to have election workers count every ballot by hand, and if so, how they would do that fast enough to announce results on election night. 

    A White House spokesperson did not answer these specific questions and instead sent a statement about voter ID and California and New York voting laws.

    In interviews with PolitiFact, voting experts agreed that if Trump’s goals are to end the use of machines and to have results on election night, those goals are diametrically opposed.

    Without machines, “Hand-counting all ballots on election night and tabulating all the results would be a vast challenge,” said Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director for Verified Voting, a nonprofit that studies election administration. “How many people do you need to hire, vet and train? How much space, in how many places, do you need to accommodate all those people and ballots? And once you have all those hand counts, how do you combine them into vote totals for many different contests in overlapping districts without possibility of error or fraud?”

    Experts said Trump is wrong to say that machine-conducted voting inevitably takes two weeks, and it’s inaccurate that using an entirely paper system would assure results on election night. More than 155 million votes were cast in the 2024 presidential election.

    States set laws that give election officials often weeks to complete an official count, which includes overseas ballots. If the margins are wide enough, media outlets project winners based on unofficial results.

    All but a tiny sliver of American voters cast their ballots either directly on paper or use machines that print out a paper record of their votes that they can verify directly, before a machine counts them. 

    Hand counting ballots is slow; machines are fast

    “Scanners make results faster, not slower,” Lindeman said.

    Hand counting is feasible for smaller-scale elections, experts told PolitiFact, but for not elections with large numbers of ballots, and with as many as a dozen races to be tallied from each ballot. If 15 offices are being contested on a ballot, those ballots would need to be counted 15 times, said Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin political scientist.

    “Countries such as Canada that hand count ballots on election night typically have only one contest on the ballot,” Burden said. 

    In many elections, each voter gets a ballot that accounts for the congressional district, county, state legislative district and local districts where they live. Because of this, Burden said, “even a modest sized city can have hundreds of unique ballot combinations. This makes hand-counting of ballots much more complicated.” 

    In Dane County, Wisconsin, which includes the state capital of Madison, voters cast about 300,000 ballots in November 2022. “It would take months” to hand-count every ballot, said Scott McDonell, the Dane County clerk.

    It took Dane County eight 16-hour days to recount by hand its 2016 presidential race ballots, McDonell said — and that was just one race.

    Burden cited a 2020 recount in Georgia’s presidential election, which required thousands of ballot counters working long shifts over multiple days to hand-count ballots for just one contest. It took almost a week to complete and cost the state millions of dollars.

    In 2023, Mohave County, Arizona, population 213,000, considered but rejected moving to hand counting for the 2024 election cycle after its elections director said it would cost $1.1 million and would require hiring 245 people. The director said a test hand count also produced errors.

    When contractors hired by Arizona Republicans hand-counted 2020 presidential and Senate votes in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs, it took them months to complete the process, using hundreds of volunteers. Their results reconfirmed Joe Biden had defeated Trump in the county.

    Stephen Richer, the former Maricopa County Recorder, told PolitiFact that “tabulation is one of the fastest parts of the process. Tabulators can read thousands of ballots an hour.”

    Maricopa County ballots cast in the 2020 general election are examined and recounted by contractors working for Florida-based company, Cyber Ninjas, at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix on May 6, 2021. (AP)

    Machines are more accurate than people for counting ballots

    Studies have shown voting machines produce more accurate counts compared with hand counts.

    “Counters must pause for regular breaks to stay rested and sharp,” Burden wrote in 2023 for The Conversation. “Counting must periodically stop to resolve challenges and questions from observers. It is painstaking work.”

    Given the limits of human endurance and focus, human counters can make errors, such as losing track of their counts.

    “In contrast, dedicated tabulator machines, which are used after voters have marked their ballots, are excellent at counting,” Burden wrote. Scanners for standardized ballots have lower error rates than most other technologies, making them significantly more accurate than counting the same ballots by hand, he said.

    Richer said in an X post that vote scanners — similar to machines that read filled-in ovals for standardized tests — “are highly, highly accurate. And fast. And cheap.” States also have procedures to test and audit voting equipment.

    “Hand counting hundreds of millions of individual votes is so stupid it’s not worth spending more time on,” Richer said on X.

    Our ruling

    Trump said with voting machines, “They say we’re going to have the results in two weeks. With paper ballots, you have the results that night.”

    Scientific studies and experience with past elections show that both parts of this assertion are incorrect.

    Trump is wrong that machine-conducted voting inevitably takes two weeks. And getting rid of machines that tabulate votes and relying solely on humans to count paper ballots would, in most cases, take longer, require more personnel and add expense to the process, particularly in large jurisdictions with large numbers of ballots cast and a variety of races on each ballot.

    We rate the statement False.

    RELATED: MAGA-Meter: Trump’s second term

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  • Brazil election body rejects Bolsonaro’s push to void votes

    Brazil election body rejects Bolsonaro’s push to void votes

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    RIO DE JANEIRO — The head of Brazil’s electoral authority on Wednesday rejected the request from President Jair Bolsonaro and his political party to annul ballots cast on most electronic voting machines, which would have overturned the Oct. 30 election.

    Alexandre de Moraes had issued a prior ruling that implicitly raised the possibility that Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party could suffer from such a challenge. He conditioned analysis of the request on the presentation of an amended report to include results from the first electoral round, on Oct. 2, in which the party won more seats in both congressional houses than any other, and he established a 24-hour deadline.

    Earlier Wednesday, party president Valdemar Costa and lawyer Marcelo de Bessa held a press conference and said there would be no amended report.

    “The complete bad faith of the plaintiff’s bizarre and illicit request … was proven, both by the refusal to add to the initial petition and the total absence of any evidence of irregularities and the existence of a totally fraudulent narrative of the facts,” de Moraes wrote in his decision hours later.

    He also ordered the suspension of government funds for the Liberal Party’s coalition until a fine of 23 million reais ($4.3 million) for bad faith litigation is paid.

    On Tuesday, de Bessa filed a 33-page request on behalf of Bolsonaro and Costa citing a software bug in the majority of Brazil’s machines — they lack individual identification numbers in their internal logs — to argue all votes they recorded should be nullified. De Bessa said that doing so would leave Bolsonaro with 51% of the remaining valid votes.

    Neither Costa nor de Bessa have explained how the bug might have affected election results. Independent experts consulted by The Associated Press said that, while newly discovered, it doesn’t affect reliability and each voting machine is still readily identifiable through other means. In his ruling on Thursday, de Moraes noted the same.

    He also wrote that the challenge to the vote appeared aimed at incentivizing anti-democratic protest movements and creating tumult, and ordered the investigation of Costa and the consultant hired to conduct an evaluation.

    “De Moraes’ message to the political establishment is: the game is over. Questioning the result of the elections is not fair play, and people and institutions who do that will be punished harshly,” said Maurício Santoro, a political science professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.

    In the press conference on Wednesday, Costa said his intention is merely to prevent the results of the 2022 vote from haunting Brazil into the future.

    The electoral authority on Oct. 30 ratified the victory of Bolsonaro’s nemesis, leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and even many of the president’s allies quickly accepted the results. Protesters in cities across the country have steadfastly refused to do the same, particularly with Bolsonaro declining to concede.

    Bolsonaro spent more than a year claiming Brazil’s electronic voting system is prone to fraud, without ever presenting evidence.

    The South American nation began using an electronic voting system in 1996 and election security experts consider such systems less secure than hand-marked paper ballots, because they leave no auditable paper trail. But Brazil’s system has been closely scrutinized by domestic and international experts who have never found evidence of it being exploited to commit fraud.

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  • Bolsonaro contests Brazil election, demands votes be anulled

    Bolsonaro contests Brazil election, demands votes be anulled

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    BRASILIA, Brazil — More than three weeks after losing a reelection bid, President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday blamed a software bug and demanded the electoral authority annul votes cast on most of Brazil’s nation’s electronic voting machines, though independent experts say the bug doesn’t affect the reliability of results.

    Such an action would leave Bolsonaro with 51% of the remaining valid votes — and a reelection victory, Marcelo de Bessa, the lawyer who filed the 33-page request on behalf of the president and his Liberal Party, told reporters.

    The electoral authority has already declared victory for Bolsonaro’s nemesis, leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and even many of the president’s allies have accepted the results. Protesters in cities across the country have steadfastly refused to do the same, particularly with Bolsonaro declining to concede.

    Liberal Party leader Valdemar Costa and an auditor hired by the party told reporters in Brasilia that their evaluation found all machines dating from before 2020 — nearly 280,000 of them, or about 59% of the total used in the Oct. 30 runoff — lacked individual identification numbers in internal logs.

    Neither explained how that might have affected election results, but said they were asking the electoral authority to invalidate all votes cast on those machines.

    The complaint characterized the bug as “irreparable non-compliance due to malfunction” that called into question the authenticity of the results.

    Immediately afterward, the head of the electoral authority issued a ruling that implicitly raised the possibility that Bolsonaro’s own party could suffer from such a challenge.

    Alexandre de Moraes said the court would not consider the complaint unless the party offers an amended report within 24 hours that would include results from the first electoral round on Oct. 2, in which the Liberal Party won more seats in both congressional houses than any other.

    The bug hadn’t been known previously, yet experts said it also doesn’t affect results. Each voting machine can still be easily identified through other means, like its city and voting district, according to Wilson Ruggiero, a professor of computer engineering and digital systems at the Polytechnic School of the University of Sao Paulo.

    Diego Aranha, an associate professor of systems security at Aarhus University in Denmark, who has participated in official security tests of Brazil’s electoral system, agreed.

    “It does not undermine the reliability or credibility in any way,” Ruggiero told The Associated Press by phone. “The key point that guarantees correctness is the digital signature associated with each voting machine.”

    While the machines don’t have individual identification numbers in their internal logs, those numbers do appear on printed receipts that show the sum of all votes cast for each candidate, said Aranha, adding the bug was only detected due to the efforts by the electoral authority to provide greater transparency.

    Bolsonaro’s less than two-point loss to da Silva on Oct. 30 was the narrowest margin since Brazil’s 1985 return to democracy. While the president hasn’t explicitly cried foul, he has refused to concede defeat or congratulate his opponent — leaving room for supporters to draw their own conclusions.

    Many have been protesting relentlessly, making claims of election fraud and demanding that the armed forces intervene.

    Dozens of Bolsonaro supporters gathered outside the news conference on Tuesday, decked out in the green and yellow of Brazil’s flag and chanting patriotic songs. Some verbally attacked and pushed journalists trying to enter the venue.

    Bolsonaro spent more than a year claiming Brazil’s electronic voting system is prone to fraud, without ever presenting evidence.

    Brazil began using an electronic voting system in 1996 and election security experts consider such systems less secure than hand-marked paper ballots, because they leave no auditable paper trail. But Brazil’s system has been closely scrutinized by domestic and international experts who have never found evidence of it being exploited to commit fraud.

    The Senate’s president, Rodrigo Pacheco, said Tuesday afternoon that the election results are “unquestionable.”

    Bolsonaro has been almost completely secluded in the official residence since his Oct. 30 defeat, inviting widespread speculation as to whether he is dejected or plotting to cling to power.

    In an interview with newspaper O Globo, Vice President Hamilton Mourão chalked up Bolsonaro’s absence to erysipelas, a skin infection on his legs that he said prevents the president from wearing pants.

    But his his son Eduardo Bolsonaro, a federal lawmaker, has been more direct.

    “We always distrusted these machines. … We want a massive audit,” the younger Bolsonaro said last week at a conference in Mexico City. “There is very strong evidence to order an investigation of Brazil’s election.”

    For its audit, the Liberal Party hired the Legal Vote Institute, a group that has been critical of the current system, saying it defies the law by failing to provide a digital record of every individual vote.

    In a separate report presented earlier this month, the Brazilian military said there were flaws in the country’s electoral systems and proposed improvements, but didn’t substantiate claims of fraud from some of Bolsonaro’s supporters.

    Analysts have suggested that the armed forces, which have been a key component of Bolsonaro’s administration, may have maintained a semblance of uncertainty over the issue to avoid displeasing the president. In a subsequent statement, the Defense Ministry stressed that while it had not found any evidence of fraud in the vote counting, it could not exclude that possibility.

    ———

    Biller reported from Rio de Janeiro. Associated Press writer Mark Stevenson in Mexico City contributed to this report.

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  • Election certification avoiding chaos, except in Arizona

    Election certification avoiding chaos, except in Arizona

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    SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Certification of this year’s midterm election results appears to be proceeding smoothly with little controversy across the country, with a small Arizona county being a rare exception, calming fears that local commissions consumed by talk of election conspiracies would create chaos by refusing to validate the will of the voters.

    Action has been orderly even in places where suspicions about election fairness ran deep and led to bitter clashes at local public meetings.

    In Nevada, a state that has been a hotbed of election conspiracy accusations and movements to ditch voting machines in favor of hand-counting all ballots, all 17 counties met a Friday-night deadline to certify election results.

    In rural Elko County, the county commission unanimously certified the results just weeks after questioning the reliability of voting machines and expressing support for hand-counting all ballots.

    Commissioners praised county Clerk Kris Jakeman for a post-election audit that included random hand-counts backing up the results from machine tabulators. Some commissioners had watched the audit and said it helped relieve some of their skepticism.

    “I’ve learned a lot this year,” said Commissioner Delmo Andreozzi. “And I appreciate everybody’s willingness to help educate me and help me become more aware about the whole process.”

    It was much the same story in New Mexico, where several rural county commissions have been under intense pressure by some residents to reject certification since the state’s primary election in June.

    In Otero County, where a crisis occurred this summer when commissioners initially denied certification after the primary, the general election results were certified this week with a drama-free unanimous vote.

    “In my heart of hearts, I think Otero County does a good job,” Commission Chairwoman Vickie Marquardt said. “I have no reason not to certify this election.”

    In another rural New Mexico county, where a livid crowd in June berated county commissioners as “cowards” and “traitors” as they certified the primary results, the room fell silent this week as the all-Republican board pored over vote tallies and signatures from poll judges. Commissioners peppered Torrance County election officials with questions before voting 3-0 to certify.

    The commission had spent months responding to doubts about voting systems with a hand recount of the primary ballots and invitations to attend security testing of ballot-counting machines.

    “I’m not seeing any discrepancies, commissioners. Are you?” Republican commission Chairman Ryan Schwebach told colleagues. He won reelection to the local post with roughly two-thirds of the vote, defeating a challenger who said vote-counting machines can’t be trusted. All but one county in New Mexico certified vote tallies this week.

    Conspiracy-focused protesters rallied Friday outside an election board meeting in Reno, Nevada, with signs reading “Don’t certify before hand count” and “We the people demand hand count.” Despite the protests, the Washoe County commission voted 4-1 to certify the results.

    County Commissioner Jeanne Herman, who represents the most rural part of the county, which stretches north to the border with Oregon, cast the lone dissenting vote. She made a failed attempt earlier this year to push an election reform package that, among other things, would have posted National Guard troops at polling places and relied almost exclusively on paper ballots.

    Christiane Brown, a Reno gun control activist, told the commission that the system worked this year, and even most candidates who had embraced the 2020 election falsehoods conceded defeat.

    “Denying results does not change them,” she said. “The people rejected lies, disinformation, intimidation and ignorance, as well as hatred. The voters spoke, the system worked, and the rule of law held.”

    In Arizona, the state’s 15 counties are just beginning to certify their election results and have until Nov. 28 to do their canvass and send final vote tallies to the secretary of state. Kari Lake, the Republican who lost the race for governor, has refused to concede and in a Thursday video said she has a team of lawyers reviewing whether Election Day issues at the polls disenfranchised some voters.

    The two Republicans who control the board in southeastern Arizona’s Cochise County delayed their certification Friday night after hearing from a trio of conspiracy theorists who argue vote-counting machines are not certified. The board ignored testimony from the state elections director, who said the contention was false.

    The board delayed the vote until the Nov. 28 deadline, saying they wanted to see proof and have the three men evaluate it. State Elections Director Kori Lorick threatened legal action “to compel compliance” and ensure that votes from about 46,000 residents were property reported.

    The state is set to certify results from all 15 counties on Dec. 5, a move needed before a recount can proceed in the race for state attorney general, which is too close to call.

    Under Arizona law, the only role of the elected county boards is to accept the numbers as they are tallied by their elections departments. If they refuse to do so, either the secretary of state or a candidate would sue.

    Election certification emerged as an issue after the 2020 presidential election in Michigan, where Trump and his allies pressured Republicans on both the state certification board and the one for Wayne County, which includes Detroit. The results, showing Democrat Joe Biden winning the state by 154,000 votes, were eventually certified.

    Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey said her office anticipates having no problems with certification of the Nov. 8 general election. By midday Friday, 71 of the state’s 83 counties had certified results.

    “More Michigan citizens cast ballots than ever before in a midterm election, and now bipartisan canvassing boards across the state are certifying the results in accordance with state law,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. “We are optimistic that all canvassers will continue to demonstrate this level of professionalism and commitment to upholding the will of the voters.”

    ___

    Sonner reported from Reno, Nevada. Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta, Ken Ritter in Las Vegas, Gabe Stern in Reno; and Corey Williams in Detroit contributed to this report.

    ___

    Learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections. And follow the AP’s election coverage of the 2022 elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.

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  • Brazil armed forces’ report on election finds no fraud

    Brazil armed forces’ report on election finds no fraud

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    RIO DE JANEIRO — The defense ministry released a report Wednesday highlighting flaws in Brazil’s electoral systems and proposing improvements, but there was nothing to substantiate claims of fraud from some of President Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters protesting his Oct. 30 defeat.

    It was the first comment by the military on the runoff election, which has drawn protests nationwide even as the transition has begun for President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s inauguration Jan. 1. Thousands have been gathering outside military installations in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Brasilia and other cities calling for intervention by the armed forces to keep Bolsonaro in office.

    When the defense ministry announced this week that it would present its report on the election, some Bolsonaro supporters rejoiced, anticipating the imminent revelation of a smoking gun. That didn’t happen.

    “There is nothing astonishing in the document,” Diego Aranha, an associate professor of systems security at Aarhus University in Denmark, who has been a member of the Brazilian electoral authority’s public security tests, told The Associated Press. “The limitations found are the same ones analysts have been complaining about for decades … but that doesn’t point to evidence of irregularity.”

    Defense Minister Paulo Nogueira wrote that “it is not possible to say” with certainty the computerzed vote tabulation system hasn’t been infilitrated by malicious code, but the 65-page report does not cite any abnormalities in the vote count. Based on the possible risk, however, the report suggests creating a commission comprised of members of civil society and auditing entities to further investigate the functioning of the electronic voting machines.

    Bolsonaro, whose less than two-point loss was the narrowest margin since Brazil’s 1985 return to democracy, hasn’t specifically cried foul since the election.

    Still, his continued refusal to concede defeat or congratulate his opponent left ample room for supporters to draw their own conclusions. And that followed more than a year of Bolsonaro repeatedly claiming Brazil’s electronic voting system is prone to fraud, without ever presenting any evidence — even when ordered to do so by the electoral authority.

    In the months leading up to the vote, as polls showed him trailing da Silva, Bolsonaro pushed for the military to take on an expanded role in the electoral process. The election authority, in a gesture apparently aimed at placating the president, allowed for armed forces’ unprecedented participation. The report presented Wednesday was signed by the defense minister and representatives from the army, navy and air force.

    The electoral authority said in a statement it “received with satisfaction the defense ministry’s final report that, like all other oversight bodies, did not point to the existence of any fraud or inconsistency in the electronic voting machines and 2022 electoral process.”

    Bolsonaro didn’t immediately comment on the report, nor did the presidential palace respond to an AP email. His party’s leader said Tuesday the president would question election results only if the report provided “real” evidence.

    Da Silva, speaking Wednesday in the capital, Brasilia, on his first visit since the election, told reporters that the vote was clean and Brazil’s electronic voting machine system is an achievement.

    “No one will believe coup-mongering discourse from someone who lost the elections,” da Silva said. “We know that the institutions were attacked by some government authorities.”

    Brazil began using an electronic voting system in 1996. Election security experts consider such systems less secure than hand-marked paper ballots, because they leave no auditable paper trail. Brazil’s system is, however, closely scrutinized and domestic authorities and international observers have never found evidence of it being exploited to commit fraud. Outside security audits have been done to prevent the system’s software from being surreptitiously altered. In addition, prior to election day, tests are conducted to assure no tampering has occurred.

    The electoral authority said in its statement Wednesday that it would analyze the defense ministry’s suggestions. Aranha, the system security professor, said the military’s suggestions to address flaws aren’t specific and would actually make an audit even more difficult.

    This year, the armed forces also conducted a partial audit, comparing hundreds of voting stations’ results to the official tally. The idea was first floated by Bolsonaro, who in May said they “will not perform the role of just rubber stamping the electoral process, or taking part as spectators.”

    The federal government’s accounts watchdog carried out a partial audit similar to that of the military, tallying votes in 604 voting machines across Brazil. It found no discrepancies. Likewise, Brazil’s Bar Association said in a report Tuesday that it had found nothing that pointed to suspicion of irregularities.

    “There are important lessons from all this,” said Paulo Calmon, a political science professor at the University of Brasilia, who continued: “primarily, the idea to formally involve the armed forces in electoral processes is an error that should never be repeated.”

    ———

    Associated Press writer Carla Bridi reported from Brasilia. AP videojournalist Juan Arraez and writer David Biller in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report.

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  • Media preps for 2022 election with focus on democracy issues

    Media preps for 2022 election with focus on democracy issues

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Time was, a television reporter assigned to “democracy issues” would have a quiet time on election night sets, occasionally popping up to talk about broken voting machines at a polling place or two.

    That’s not the case in 2022.

    Between election deniers and threats to voting rights, news organizations have emphasized the beat. That will continue next Tuesday, with coverage plans for the midterms rounding into shape.

    CBS News will have its first-ever “Democracy Desk” to look at those issues and how law enforcement is dealing with threats. NBC News’ “Vote Watch Unit” is looking at election security and disinformation. ABC News has assigned the team of Dan Abrams, Pierre Thomas, Terry Moran and Kate Shaw to the topic.

    News teams, mindful of public suspicion about journalists, also promise transparency in their own operations.

    “Because there is an adamant disinformation campaign, there are efforts to sow chaos, one of the most important things we can do is stick to the facts,” said CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell.

    Following a precedent set in the 2018 midterms, the broadcast networks will set aside their entire prime-time schedules to follow the action. CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC will have wall-to-wall coverage. There will be a wealth of online options for those whom one screen won’t do.

    Expect surprises. Close pre-election polls, with control of the House and Senate up for grabs, combined with the lingering question of whether any politician will take Donald Trump’s example from 2020 and not accept the results, make the night potentially combustible.

    “The stakes are high,” said David Chalian, CNN’s political director. “The results of this will alter the course of Biden’s presidency.”

    ABC News is preparing for the possibility that answers to which party controls the House and Senate won’t be known when the network’s planned cut-off point of 2 a.m. Eastern is reached — and to extend that if necessary, said Marc Burstein, who’s in charge of the coverage.

    “There’s just a lot of tight races,” said Martha MacCallum, who will co-anchor Fox News’ coverage with Bret Baier. “As a reporter and anchor that makes it a lot more fun to cover. It’s going to be a really exciting night in a lot of ways in terms of the drama that has already been built into this.”

    Fox became a major part of the election night stories in 2018, when it declared long before its rivals that Democrats would control the House, and in 2020, when its first call of Arizona for Joe Biden infuriated Trump and his supporters.

    After the fallout, one of Fox’s decision desk executives retired and another was reassigned, soon to leave the network — even though Fox got it right.

    As a result, Fox viewers will probably see a lot of Arnon Mishkin, who returns to lead the network’s decision desk. Fox wants to bring viewers into the process as much as possible this year, so they can see the communication between the anchors, decision desk and producers, MacCallum said.

    “We want people to understand how the calls are made,” she said. “We’re definitely making an effort to open up that process so viewers can see for themselves.”

    Networks won’t say they’ll be more cautious than usual in calling races, not wanting the implication they weren’t careful enough in the past. Executives noted that news organizations didn’t declare Biden the winner in 2020 until the Saturday after the election.

    But transparency — showing with perhaps mind-numbing detail how voting is going in close races — was a byword.

    “We care about being right,” said Carrie Budoff Brown, senior vice president of “Meet the Press” and executive in charge of NBC News’ election coverage, “not necessarily being first.”

    Burstein preached patience with so many local races. “We’re not going to jump to any conclusions that it’s a red wave or a blue wave,” he said.

    The Associated Press, which has counted the nation’s votes for more than a century, does not declare a winner in an individual race until it has determined that there is no scenario under which trailing candidates can close the gap — even if a candidate has declared victory or others have conceded.

    One of Tuesday’s biggest mysteries is whether any 2020 election deniers become 2022 election deniers.

    “I can’t control what a politician comes out and says about the election results,” Chalian said. “What is in our control is our ability to present the factual results to the viewer.”

    CNN will have more reporters out in the states than it ever has for a midterm election, he said. Other networks echo him; CBS News is preparing to tap into the expertise and staffing of its local stations across the country. NBC News has assigned six reporters each to Georgia and Pennsylvania alone.

    “Through it all, they are going to have to be nimble and cover whatever story that emerges,” Budoff Brown said.

    NBC News’ coverage will be led by the team of Lester Holt, Savannah Guthrie, Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell. David Muir anchors ABC’s coverage. CNN says its hosts include Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, Dana Bash and Don Lemon.

    With the exit of news anchor Brian Williams, MSNBC’s coverage will be led by three anchors who host opinion shows: Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid and Nicolle Wallace.

    ___

    David Bauder is the media writer for The Associated Press. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/dbauder

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  • Hand vote count stops, but Nevada county vows to try again

    Hand vote count stops, but Nevada county vows to try again

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    LAS VEGAS (AP) — A rural Nevada county roiled by voting machine conspiracy theories stopped its unprecedented effort Friday to hand count ballots cast in advance of Election Day.

    But Nye County officials vowed to reshape their plan and seek another go-ahead from the Nevada Supreme Court, after justices ruled late Thursday that counting methods used this week violated rules they set to prevent the county from allowing early disclosure of election results.

    “Yesterday’s Supreme Court order requires us to make some changes to our hand count process,” Nye County officials said in a statement issued Friday that promised to “resume as soon as our plan is in compliance with the court’s order and approved by the secretary of state.”

    No counting had been scheduled Saturday or Sunday, county spokesman Arnold Knightly said.

    Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada said Friday they stood ready to challenge any effort to restart the hand tallies next week. They don’t believe there’s any hand-counting scenario that would pass legal muster.

    “Our position has always been that a general election is not an appropriate avenue for conducting experiments with election processes and it has become increasingly clear that there is no path forward for this hand counting process under the law,” said Sadmira Ramic, ACLU of Nevada’s voting rights attorney

    Volunteers spent hours Wednesday and Thursday hand counting hundreds of mail ballots before the court issued a unanimous three-page opinion siding with objections raised by the ACLU.

    The civil rights advocacy group accused Nye County officials of failing to prevent public release of early results before polls close to in-person voting Nov. 8. It argued that reading candidates’ names aloud from ballots within hearing distance of public observers violated the court rule.

    On Wednesday, The Associated Press and other observers, including some from the ACLU, watched as volunteers were sworn in and split into groups in six different rooms at a Nye County office building in Pahrump, 60 miles (96 kilometers) west of Las Vegas.

    Some teams the AP observed spent about three hours each counting 50 ballots. Mismatches, where all three talliers didn’t have the same number of votes for a candidate, led to recounts.

    Immediately following the court’s Thursday decision, Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske and Mark Wlaschin, the state’s top election officials, ordered the count to stop until after polls close on Nov. 8.

    “No alternative hand-counting process may proceed,” Cegavske said a letter to interim Nye County Clerk Mark Kampf, until the counting method complies with the Supreme Court’s Oct. 21 order.

    Cegavske has been a GOP critic of voter-fraud conspiracy theories that fueled hand tallying of ballots in the state. She defended results of the 2020 election as reliable and accurate, was censured by her party for her stance, and is not seeking reelection.

    The sprawling county between Las Vegas and Reno, is home to about 50,000 residents, including about 33,000 registered voters. The county reported receiving nearly 4,700 ballots as of Wednesday.

    Ballots cast early — in-person or by mail — are typically counted by machine on Election Day, with results released after polls close. In most places, hand counts are used after an election on a limited basis to ensure machine tallies are accurate.

    Nye County commissioners voted to hand-count all ballots after complaints by residents echoing nearly two years of conspiracy theories related to voting machines and false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

    Trump won 69% of the vote in Nye County, but Democratic President Joe Biden won Nevada by about 2.4%.

    Kampf plans to use Dominion voting machines as the primary vote tabulators for this election, but has floated the idea of scrapping the machines in future elections. The effort to begin the hand count of mail ballots is a nod to the time the process takes and a bid to meet a state certification deadline on Nov. 17.

    Nye is the most prominent county in the U.S. to change its vote-counting process in reaction to the conspiracy theories — even though there has been no evidence of widespread fraud or manipulation of machines in the 2020 election, including in Nevada. The decision prompted the long-time county clerk to resign. Kampf was appointed to replace her.

    Nevada has one of the most closely watched U.S. Senate races in the country, as well as high-stakes contests for governor and the office that oversees elections.

    The Republican nominee for secretary of state, Jim Marchant, has repeated unsubstantiated election claims and said he wants to spread hand-counting to every Nevada county.

    Athar Haseebullah, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada, vowed to continue to challenge any hand-counting attempt in Nye County or elsewhere.

    “While Nye County’s actions might be a sign of things to come, our response to their actions is also a sign of things to come,” Haseebullah said. “We will combat all efforts to destroy our democracy up and down Nevada. We welcome the fight.”

    ____

    Associated Press writers Scott Sonner and Gabe Stern in Reno, Nevada, contributed to this report. Stern is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Stern on Twitter: @gabestern326

    ____

    Associated Press coverage of democracy receives support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

    Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections.

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  • Bolsonaro, Lula appear headed for runoff in Brazil race

    Bolsonaro, Lula appear headed for runoff in Brazil race

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    RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s top two presidential candidates were neck-and-neck late Sunday in a highly polarized election that could determine if the country returns a leftist to the helm of the world’s fourth-largest democracy or keeps the far-right incumbent in office for another four years.

    The race pits incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro against his political nemesis, leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. There are nine other candidates, but their support pales to that for Bolsonaro and da Silva.

    With 91.6% of votes counted, da Silva had 47.3%, ahead of Bolsonaro with 44.2%, according to the electoral authority.

    It appears increasingly likely neither of the top two candidates will receive more than 50% of the valid votes, which exclude spoiled and blank ballots, which would mean a second round vote will be scheduled for Oct. 30.

    “We will most likely have a second round,” said Nara Pavão, who teaches political science at the Federal University of Pernambuco. “The probability of ending the election now (in the first round) is too small.”

    Recent opinion polls had given da Silva a commanding lead — the last Datafolha survey published Saturday found a 50% to 36% advantage for da Silva among those who intended to vote. It interviewed 12,800 people, with a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

    The election wound up being far tighter than anticipated, both in the presidential contest and those for governorships and congressional seats.

    “The far-right has shown great resilience in the presidential and in the state races,” said Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo.

    “It is too soon to go too deep, but this election shows Bolsonaro’s victory in 2018 was not a hiccup,” he added.

    Bolsonaro outperformed in Brazil’s southeast region, which includes populous Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais states, according to Rafael Cortez, who oversees political risk at consultancy Tendencias Consultoria.

    “The polls didn’t capture that growth,” Cortez said.

    Bolsonaro’s administration has been marked by incendiary speech, his testing of democratic institutions, his widely criticized handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the worst deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in 15 years.

    But he has built a devoted base by defending conservative values, rebuffing political correctness and presenting himself as protecting the nation from leftist policies that he says infringe on personal liberties and produce economic turmoil.

    While voting earlier Sunday, Marley Melo, a 53-year-old trader in capital Brasilia, sported the yellow of the Brazilian flag, which Bolsonaro and his supporters have coopted for demonstrations. Melo said he is once again voting for Bolsonaro, who met his expectations, and he doesn’t believe the surveys that show him trailing.

    “Polls can be manipulated. They all belong to companies with interests,” he said.

    A slow economic recovery has yet to reach the poor, with 33 million Brazilians going hungry despite higher welfare payments. Like several of its Latin American neighbors coping with high inflation and a vast number of people excluded from formal employment, Brazil is considering a shift to the political left.

    Bolsonaro has repeatedly questioned the reliability not just of opinion polls, but also of Brazil’s electronic voting machines. Analysts fear he has laid the groundwork to reject results.

    At one point, Bolsonaro claimed to possess evidence of fraud, but never presented any, even after the electoral authority set a deadline to do so. He said as recently as Sept. 18 that if he doesn’t win in the first round, something must be “abnormal.”

    Da Silva, 76, was once a metalworker who rose from poverty to the presidency and is credited with building an extensive social welfare program during his 2003-2010 tenure that helped lift tens of millions into the middle class.

    But he is also remembered for his administration’s involvement in vast corruption scandals that entangled politicians and business executives.

    Da Silva’s own convictions for corruption and money laundering led to 19 months imprisonment, sidelining him from the 2018 presidential race that polls indicated he had been leading against Bolsonaro. The Supreme Court later annulled da Silva’s convictions on grounds that the judge was biased and colluded with prosecutors.

    Social worker Nadja Oliveira, 59, said she voted for da Silva and even attended his rallies, but since 2018 votes for Bolsonaro.

    “Unfortunately the Workers’ Party disappointed us. It promised to be different,” she said in Brasilia.

    Others, like Marialva Pereira, are more forgiving. She said she would vote for the former president for the first time since 2002.

    “I didn’t like the scandals in his first administration, never voted for the Workers’ Party again. Now I will, because I think he was unjustly jailed and because Bolsonaro is such a bad president that it makes everyone else look better,” said Pereira, 47.

    Speaking after casting his ballot in Sao Bernardo do Campo, the manufacturing hub in Sao Paulo state where he was a union leader, da Silva recalled that four years ago he was imprisoned and unable to vote.

    Bolsonaro grew up in a lower-middle-class family before joining the army. He turned to politics after being forced out of the military for openly pushing to raise servicemen’s pay. During his seven terms as a fringe lawmaker in Congress’ lower house, he regularly expressed nostalgia for the country’s two-decade military dictatorship.

    His overtures to the armed forces have raised concern that his possible rejection of election results could be backed by top brass.

    On Saturday, Bolsonaro shared social media posts by right-leaning foreign politicians, including former U.S. President Donald Trump, who called on Brazilians to vote for him. Israel’s former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed gratitude for stronger bilateral relations and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also praised him.

    After voting Sunday morning, Bolsonaro told journalists that “clean elections must be respected” and that the first round would be decisive. Asked if he would respect results, he gave a thumbs up and walked away.

    Leda Wasem, 68, had no doubt Bolsonaro will not just be reelected. Wearing a jersey of the national soccer squad at a polling place in downtown Curitiba, the real estate agent said an eventual da Silva victory could have only one explanation: fraud.

    “I wouldn’t believe it. Where I work, where I go every day, I don’t see a single person who supports Lula,” she said.

    ———

    Savarese reported from Sao Bernardo do Campo. AP writers Daniel Politi and Carla Bridi reported from Curitiba and Brasilia.

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  • Brazil holds historic election with Lula against Bolsonaro

    Brazil holds historic election with Lula against Bolsonaro

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    RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilians were voting on Sunday in a highly polarized election that could determine if the country returns a leftist to the helm of the world’s fourth-largest democracy or keeps the far-right incumbent in office for another four years.

    The race pits incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro against his political nemesis, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. There are nine other candidates, but their support pales to that for Bolsonaro and da Silva.

    Recent opinion polls have given da Silva a commanding lead — the last Datafolha survey published Saturday found a 50% to 36% advantage for da Silva among those who intended to vote. It interviewed 12,800 people, with a margin of error of two percentage points.

    Agatha de Carvalho, 24, arrived to her local voting station in Rio de Janeiro’s working class Rocinha neighborhood shortly before it opened, hoping to cast her ballot before work, but found 100 others were already lined up. She said she would vote for da Silva, and called Bolsonaro “awful.”

    “A lot of people died because of him during the pandemic. If he hadn’t done some of the things he did, some of those deaths could have been avoided,” she said.

    Bolsonaro’s administration has been marked by incendiary speech, his testing of democratic institutions, his widely criticized handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the worst deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in 15 years.

    But he has built a devoted base by defending traditional family values, rebuffing political correctness and presenting himself as protecting the nation from leftist policies that infringe on personal liberties and produce economic turmoil.

    Luiz Garcez, 49, in the southern city of Curitiba, said Bolsonaro’s presidency has been “among the best in history” because “he built a lot and helped the country.”

    A slow economic recovery has yet to reach the poor, with 33 million Brazilians going hungry despite higher welfare payments. Like several of its Latin American neighbors coping with high inflation and a vast number of people excluded from formal employment, Brazil is considering a shift to the political left.

    Gustavo Petro in Colombia, Gabriel Boric in Chile and Pedro Castillo in Peru are among the left-leaning leaders in the region who have recently assumed power.

    Da Silva could win in the first round, without need for a run-off on Oct. 30, if he gets more than 50% of valid votes, which exclude spoiled and blank ballots. Brazil has more than 150 million eligible voters, and voting is mandatory, but abstention rates can reach as high as 20%.

    An outright win by da Silva would sharpen focus on Bolsonaro’s reaction to the count. He has repeatedly questioned the reliability not just of opinion polls, but also of Brazil’s electronic voting machines. Analysts fear he has laid the groundwork to reject results.

    At one point, Bolsonaro claimed to possess evidence of fraud, but never presented any, even after the electoral authority set a deadline to do so. He said as recently as Sept. 18 that if he doesn’t win in the first round, something must be “abnormal.”

    The two frontrunners have key bases of support: evangelicals and white men for Bolsonaro, and women, minorities and the poor for da Silva.

    Da Silva, 76, was once a metalworker who rose from poverty to the presidency and is credited with building an extensive social welfare program during his 2003-2010 tenure that helped lift tens of millions into the middle class.

    But he is also remembered for his administration’s involvement in vast corruption scandals that entangled politicians and business executives.

    Da Silva’s own convictions for corruption and money laundering led to 19 months imprisonment, sidelining him from the 2018 presidential race that polls indicated he had been leading against Bolsonaro. The Supreme Court later annulled da Silva’s convictions on the grounds that the judge was biased and colluded with prosecutors.

    Marialva Santos Pereira, 47, said she would vote for the former president for the first time since 2002.

    “I didn’t like the scandals in his first administration, never voted for the Workers’ Party again. Now I will, because I think he was unjustly jailed and because Bolsonaro is such a bad president that it makes everyone else look better.”

    Speaking after casting his ballot in Sao Bernardo do Campo, the manufacturing hub in Sao Paulo state where he was a union leader, da Silva recalled that four years ago he was imprisoned and unable to vote.

    “I want to try to make the country return to normality, try to make this country again take care of its people,” he told reporters.

    Bolsonaro grew up in a lower-middle-class family before joining the army. He turned to politics after being forced out of the military for openly pushing to raise servicemen’s pay. During his seven terms as a fringe lawmaker in Congress’ lower house, he regularly expressed nostalgia for the country’s two-decade military dictatorship.

    His overtures to the armed forces have raised concern that his possible rejection of election results could be backed by top brass.

    Traditionally, the armed forces’ involvement in elections has been limited to carrying voting machines to isolated communities and beefing up security in violent regions. But this year, Bolsonaro suggested the military should conduct a parallel count of the ballots.

    While that didn’t materialize, the Defense Ministry said it will cross check results in over 380 polling stations across Brazil. Any citizen or entity is able to do the same, consulting a vote tally available at each station after ballot closure and online.

    On Saturday, Bolsonaro shared social media posts by right-leaning foreign politicians, including former U.S. President Donald Trump, who called on Brazilians to vote for him. Israel’s former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed gratitude for stronger bilateral relations and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also praised him.

    After voting Sunday morning, wearing a T-shirt with the green and yellow of Brazil’s flag, Bolsonaro told journalists that “clean elections must be respected” and that the first round would be decisive. Asked if he would respect results, he gave a thumbs up and walked away.

    Because the vote is conducted electronically, preliminary results are usually out within minutes, with the final result available a few hours later. This year, all polls will close at 5 p.m. Brasilia time (4 p.m. EDT; 2000 GMT).

    ———

    Savarese reported from Sao Bernardo do Campo. AP writer Daniel Politi reported from Curitiba.

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