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Photos: A look back at the Associated Press's process of counting votes

Photos captured how The Associated Press counted the presidential, congressional and state elections votes since 1936.

The Associated Press will count the nation’s vote in real-time Tuesday and report the results of presidential, congressional and state elections — as it has for more than 170 years.

The way the information is compiled on election night may have changed — cellphones as opposed to landlines, electronic data feeds as opposed to “election tabulators” fitted with rolls of paper, journalists crowding around computer screens, as opposed to teletype machines.

But the AP's role in getting accurate results out to the nation and the world remains the same.

“There is no national election commission in the United States that tells us who won on Election Day,” said David Scott, a deputy managing editor who helps oversee AP’s coverage of elections. “Statewide results aren’t available in every state, either. If we want to know who the next president will be, we’ve got to do the math ourselves — county by county nationwide.”

RELATED: How The Associated Press counts votes and calls races

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HOW AP GATHERS THE VOTES

Shortly before polls close, roughly 4,000 stringers — temporary freelancers — arrive at county election offices. As officials begin to release results, these stringers phone in the raw vote totals to AP colleagues around the country.

More than 800 vote entry clerks, working remotely this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, answer those calls, take down the tally and enter the results into AP's election database. Since many states and counties display their election night results on websites, some clerks monitor those sites and enter those results into the database, too.

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