Adding depth to coverage of election results

For help in the scramble to provide instant results and analysis — all while sorting through close decisions on the local and federal level —  check out these resources for adding depth to your election night coverage, the day after stories and long range post-election stories. Also, check out our look at data-driven stories leading up to election day.

What’s being done

• The Los Angeles Times site had a presidential map as well as a map of California showing how counties voted on candidate races and ballot measures.
• The Huffington Post also had an election center, complete with map and table showing results with pre-election estimates.
• The Guardian has been mapping global reactions to President Obama’s reelection.
• The Seattle Times graphics team put together this site to track state-level results.
• The New York Times turned its homepage into a map of live updates for the presidential race and other races, as well as a scorecard of battleground states. The Times also has a chart of network calls. After the election, the Times hompage featured this series of graphics on how Obama won reelection.
• The Associated Press created this responsive, interactive graphic that will show election results as they come in, including candidate races and state-by-state ballot measures.
• The Washington Post has a similar map of electoral college results by state, sortable by voting margin, county results and county margin. The post also has this explainer of exit polls in swing states.
• The Wall Street Journal also has a map with live updates, with a slightly different format and a chart that clearly shows voter margin by state.
• NPR created this interactive page to be updated live starting at 6 p.m., showing electoral college votes as they come in. 
• This ESRI map is set up to track election results. ESRI also has maps showing the impact of Hurricane Sandy on the election and this one showing voter issues.
• Politico has this interactive map of election results, powered by Associated Press data.
• WNYC is tracking results in map form with Patchwork Nation, demographic and geographic breakdown of 12 different types of county in America.
• The Texas Tribune has an extensive scoreboard for federal and state elections.
• The Chicago Tribune’s online app updates results the presidential election in map form with a table below. It also has interactive tables for U.S. Senate and House races, as well as the Illinois general assembly and other state races and referendum.
• The Oregonian has a presidential election map powered by The Washington Post and a scoreboard for local elections broken down by county.
• The Delaware News Journal turned its homepage into an election tracker, featuring state-level, senate and house races with a measure of voting completion.
• The Spokesman-Review’s app has searchable tables of the Washington and Idaho elections, as well as the AP’s presidential map.
• MinnPost has an election dashboard with live updates on presidential and congressional races as well as state legislation.

 What else is out there? Help add to our list by emailing suggestions to tony@ire.org or tweeting us @IRE_NICAR.

Tipsheets

Election Night Results & Maps — Links
John Keefe shares his coverage of the 2008 election process

Covering Elections
Al Shaw provides tips on reporting on elections and mapping live results online

Election Returns
Jeff Thomas of the Colorado Springs Gazette explains how his newsroom produced comprehensive maps showing election results by streets on deadline using CAR technology. The hard copy file includes a number of very detailed examples.

Following the Money After Elections
Ron Nixon looks at the different resources you can used to follow the paper trail long after the election. He lists resources such as contracts, bills and vote tracking, uniform commercial code filings, statements of economic interest, left over campaign funds, gifts and trips, and speaking fees.

Getting started on electronic voting issues
This tipsheet includes a list of general sources about the problems involved with electronic voting. Documented problems with voting systems are discussed as well as proposed solutions to the problems.

Related Stories

Making Elections Fair to Minorities; Euclid, where blacks have never won an election
Reporters with The Record performed an independent analysis of one community’s election process, only to discover “some level of racially polarized voting in four of five elections. The analysis shows that, in a community that is made up of 29% African-Americans and 56.8% whites, making the elections unfair and unbalanced. As a result, the election process made it more difficult for all members of the community to be fairly represented. As a result of this, the community of Teaneck was under investigation of the Justice Department.

Election 2004: Stolen or Lost?
The author investigated claims that the 2004 election in Ohio was stolen from the democrats through political fraud. The results of the investigation found this not to be the case.

Machine Politics
Wired News produced this series of online reports on the rush to purchase electronic voting machines after the Florida election debacle of 2000. Zetter found that the new machines are not very secure. It turns out that source codes for the machines were easy to obtain, voting machines were left unattended for days before elections and could easily be tampered with, Diebold Election Systems’ (one of the main voting machine manufacturers) company server was easy to hack into, and there were numerous incidents of inaccuracies in voting results. Zetter also found hidden financial ties between Diebold and a group of disabled activists pushing for the adoption of the machines.

Newspapers’ recount shows Bush prevailed in Fla. vote
USA Today, The Miami Herald, and Knight Ridder newspapers commissioned the naional accounting firm BDO Seidman to conduct a comprehensive review of over 61,000 undervote ballots which were not counted in Florida’s portion of the 2000 Presidential race. The results showed that George W. Bush would have won Florida in all circumstances except if a strict standard was applied.

Indecision 2000
WKRC-TV reports that “the real shame of America’s dysfunctional electoral can be found not only in Palm Beach, but in thousands of counties nationwide.” The investigation looks at the problems in Hamilton County, Ohio. The main finding is that if all ballots disqualified for double voting would have counted, Al Gore would have picked up 730 additional votes. The result is based on a methodology that assumes the percentage of the disqualified votes for Gore (from all disqualified votes) is equal to the percentage of the counted votes for Gore in the official election result for a specific precinct. The number and ratio of votes thrown out in the 2000 presidential election were much higher for African-American communities than for similar-sized white communities in Hamilton county.

Florida’s ‘Disappeared Voters’: Disenfranchised by the GOP
The Nation examines the systematic attempts in Florida to keep black voters from voting, most notably ex-cons. “After reviewing The Nation’s findings, voter demographics authority David Bositis concluded that the purge-and-block program was ‘a patently obvious technique to discriminate against black voters.'” The block-and-purge program cost $4 million, which would not have been spent if results were not expected, The Nation reports.