The Alaska citizen., 1916-11-13
Workings of The Associated Press Are Described How Election News Was Gathered and Distributed

at tHe IlOsl COuNtHltHl center, uSudl- ly the county seat. from which he throws out his net for the gathering of his local returns.
 For the special work in hand, twen- ty-nve extra wires are strung into The Associated Press offices in New York. giving direct and exclusive con nection with the principal cities. Be fore the operators is stacked d varied assortment of printed forms. whose blank spaces await the figures that tell the story. There are pink forms, blue forms. buff. green, yellow and white to make the various compila- tions of the vote for president, gov ernor senate, congress and the two houses of the state legislature.
 In an adjoining room there have been assembled a staff of hundred men to serve as tabulatOTs Previous to the election The Associated Press has arranged with some of the best banks in the city to furnish expert accountants for this work, They work in relays. the first crew report ing at the close of the polls at fiy" o'clock, compiling the figures until two o'clock in the morning
 Less than ten minutes after the closing of the polls the work begins. The first returns in New York ar" invariably from some of the upstate cities where voting machines are em- ployed. There are, however, some localities on Cape Cod and down in Maine which for some years have prided themselves on being the first in with their votes. In such small places the law permits the opening of the ballot boxes as soon as it has been made certain that the full vote of the place has been boiled. and the result is then made known.
 It is only by dribets that the first figures come in, but once the ava lanche is started there is no let-up to the tick of the telegraph saunders. and swarm of the colored blanks is kept flying from the receiving operators to the tabulators The figures are first entered by the tabu lators and passed along to the Jo,
 mated chief who keeps a "Doomsday Book" showing the running total Of the vote throughout the nlghl Every fifteen minutes the business of tabu- lation is punctuated by the issue of a bulletin on New York state, which | is rushed to the leased trunk wires of The Associated Press sand over these main arteries and secondary ones-some 47,0OO miles Of them, some eighty different circuits the news circulates. keeping all of the nine hundred and forty newspaper members of the association posted on how the country is going.
 The form of these bulletins is known to thousands who have seen them flashed on the election screens:
 506 election districts out of
 5700 in New York state. for
 president, give: Wilson. ........
 Hughes. s............
 So, district by district, these bulle- tins grow until it looks so ertain to some of the experts that one paper or another will concede somebody election But The Associated Press comedies nothing. It must KNOW.
 In the year of the Odell-Coler fight for governor in New York in 1900, it's system had a severe test. ColeT ran up big vote in New York city, and the heavy vote of Odel upstate was overlooked by many of the news papers which conceded Coler's cleo tion. The Associated Press, in the midst of this confusion was led to wonder if it's figures were right. The | general manager had Oiding cCnl- dence in his men and figures. but in l the face of concession that some Of the papers were making of Colers election, something must be done to l check the matter He ordered a re count The system provided for just such an emergency, and this Odell- l Coler year is the only time it has ever been called into play All of l the county returns, after being tabu- lated are hung on large rack of l hooks, classified by counties, where 1 they are immediately available for re count off the hooks came these | hundreds of telegrams, and in just 1 fifteen minutes time the entire state vote was recounted. The head taDu- 1 lator. forgetting for the moment that he was in a newspaper office instead 1 of his bank, exclaimed: MT, Stone. we check to penny!" The recount tallied exactly with the figures The Associated Press had previously