The Cordova daily times., 1916-10-28
HOW ASSOCIATED PRESS
 COVERS ELECTION RETURNS

where voting machines are employed. There are, however, some localities on Cape Cod and down in Maine which for years have prided themselves on being the first in with their vote. 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 driblets 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 a swarm of the colored blanks is kept flying from the receiving oper- ators to the tabulators. The figures are first entered by the tabuIator and passed along to the designated chief who keeps a "Doomsday Book" show ing the running total of the vote throughout the night Every fifteen minutes the business of tabulation is punctuated by the issue of a bulletin on New York state. which is rushed to the leased trunk wires of the As sociated Press - and over these main arteries and secondary ones - some 47.000 miles of them. some eighty diff ferent circuits - the news circulates keeping all of the nine hundred and forty newspaper members of.the asso citation 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:
 "5O6 election districts out of 5.7oo in New York state, for president, give: Wilson -; Hughes--."
 So, district by district, these bulle- tins grow until it looks so certain to some of the experts that one paper or another will concede somebody's election. But the Associated Press comedies nothing. It must know. In the year of the Oden-Coler fight for governor in New York in 1900. it's system had a severe test. Coler ran up big vote in New York city. and the heavy vote of Odell upstate was overlooked by many of the newspapers which conceded Coler's election. The Associated Press, in the midst Of this confusion was led to wonder if it's fig. ures were right. The general manager. had an abiding confidence in his men and figures. but in the face of conces- sions that some of the papers were making of Coler's election. something must be done to check the matter He ordered a recount The system pro vided for just such an emergency. and this Odell-Coler year is the only time i 1t has ever been called into play. All of the county returns. after being tab ulated, are hung on a large rack of hooks, classified by counties. where they are immediately available for re count Off the hooks came these hun dreds of telegrams. and in just fifteen minutes time the entire state vote was recounted The head tabulator. forgetting for the moment that he was in a newspaper office instead of his bank, exclaimed: Mir. Stone, We check to penny!" The recount tai lied exactly with the figures the As sociated Press had previously given out and the papers. which, indepen- dently of the Associated Press fig ures, had conceded Coler's election,
 had eventually to admit their error. The accuracy of the Associated
 Press figures has seldom since been
 questioned. In connection with the
 recent New York state primary. in the
 fight between Calder and Bacon for
 the Republican nomination as candi date for a seat in the United States senate. the majority given by the As, situations, while the army of trained Associated Press men are assembling