JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
It is exactly two weeks until Election Day, but election season is already in full swing, with mail-in voting and early voting already underway. As polls begin to close on November 5, a team of 5,000 people will be working with the Associated Press to tally up all those votes and get the results back to the American people as quickly as possible. And their work goes well beyond the presidential race. The AP will also call winners in roughly 7,000 state and local elections. David Scott oversees the AP's decision team, and he joins us now to explain how all of this works. Welcome.
DAVID SCOTT: Hi.
SUMMERS: Now, I'm a former AP staffer, so I've been able to watch this firsthand, and I know that you guys don't wait for a hundred percent of the ballots to come in before you make a call. So help us understand how you balance the need to announce a winner as soon as possible with the uncertainty and the fact that there's still ballots out there.
SCOTT: Well, we start with the fact that we're not calling races until we're certain that there is a winner, right? And if that means that we have to wait for all the ballots to be counted and a race to go all the way to certification, we wait. And we have done that, and we still do that in some races that are exceptionally close and that are exceptionally tight.
Most races, however, we're able to look at the data that's come in, the vote counts that have come in and the other data points that we're able to look at and analyze and see that those trailing candidates are far enough behind that there's not a chance for them to overtake the winner. So we're trying to call races as soon as possible but never at the risk of making a mistake and declaring a winner when they've not actually won.
SUMMERS: I think a lot of us remember 2020, where we had really more of an election week than an Election Day, and it took days for the results in the presidential race to come in. So tell us. What do you expect this time around? Do you think that you will be able to call a winner on election night?
SCOTT: You know, we're used to this idea that we should all know who the next president is going to be by the time the late local news starts on the East Coast or by the time we go to bed at night on election night. And often that's the case. Often it's not the case. It really varies. If we go back to 2000, when there was no race call on election night or - really, AP never declared a winner...
SUMMERS: Right.
SCOTT: ...In that race. Sometimes we're able to do it on election night. Sometimes, you know, it's Wednesday, like in the race that Donald Trump won, or when George Bush beat John Kerry. And sometimes it takes quite a bit longer. Our last presidential election went to Saturday, and it took us until that time to know the results in Pennsylvania and then ultimately that Joe Biden had won. So what I've been telling people is prepare for everything. It could be a race that's decided on election night. It could be one that takes several days. And so we're just going to have to wait to see what the voters do and what the voters decide.
SUMMERS: David, former President Trump has continued to lie about the 2020 election results, and a majority of his supporters - they believe these falsehoods. The former president has cast doubt on the upcoming election, too. How are you and your team preparing for the possibility of seeing disputed election results this time around?
SCOTT: Well, the good news is that our election system in this country is run by people, public servants. And they're really committed to this process. They're really, really good at it, too. There's almost no voter fraud. I mean, the number of fraudulent ballots in a presidential election you can count almost on one hand. And campaigns can make claims. Candidates can make claims. But ultimately, the numbers are what the numbers are. The voters make their choice. We get those results. They're reported by election officials. We count all of those results up, and we declare a winner. We're driven entirely by the facts. We're driven entirely by what the voters decide.
SUMMERS: David, I want to end on this. I mean, there's just a lot of election-related anxiety out there, a lot of people on election night who are going to be glued to their TVs, their computers, their radio, really taking in all of this fire hose of information, trying to figure out who's won and lost races up and down the ballot. As someone who sits in the seat that's helping make these decisions and inform America, what's your advice for people as they're sitting there consuming all of this news?
SCOTT: It's so hard, but just be patient. I mean, think about all the work that goes into doing a presidential election in the United States. A hundred sixty million ballots are going to be cast and counted. Voting takes place over several weeks. And yet within a couple of hours or within a couple of days, our election officials and the Associated Press - we're able to tally up all those votes and say who the winners are. And if you think about the scale of what goes into a presidential election in the United States, it's really amazing. And so we can wait, and we can be patient and let the process work itself out to know who we've picked to be our next leaders.
SUMMERS: That was David Scott of the decision desk at the Associated Press, where he is also vice president and head of news strategy and operations. David, thank you so much.
SCOTT: Glad to be here. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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