The U.S. presidential election is a massive operation that involves hundreds of thousands of people working to accurately count and report results from over 100,000 precincts across the country. The process varies across states and jurisdictions, with counties or towns often administering elections.
NBC News received over 88,000 updates on vote totals from 542 races in the November 2020 election. Edison Research collects data state by state and county by county to transmit to news outlets like NBC. The results you see on election night are unofficial, and only become final when states certify them after post-election audits.
To ensure accuracy, there are multiple error detection fail-safes at each stage of the counting process. Local precincts, states, and news outlets like NBC all have quality assurance checks in place to verify vote counts and catch mistakes. The Decision Desk at NBC News will not project a winner until they are certain the results are error-free.
This detailed process, involving a massive number of people and technology, ensures that election results in the U.S. are accurate and trustworthy. Understanding how the vote counts are collected and reported can help to build confidence in the democratic process.
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