Reporting/What Does It Encompass?

[Tim Bovee <tbovee@ap.org>]

Regarding the scope of this project:

I believe there is some ambiguity in defining the second-phase Reporting
section. By this do we mean the way secretaries of state (in the U.S.)
and other election officials report returns to the media and directly to
the public via the WWW, or do we understand this to also encompass the
way returns are reported by media (principally AP and Voter News
Service) to display devices used by television stations and to
politically oriented web sites. (By the former I mean the software that
puts returns on the screen as overlays.)

Historically, the AP national and state tables format has driven the
software design of returns display technology. In the U.S., at least,
secretaries of state at present have no standard for reporting returns
to the public--they generally rely on us to get the returns out in a
timely fashion.

Tim
-- 
Tim Bovee, Director of Projects/Technology
The Associated Press, Washington
202-776-9465, tbovee@ap.org