Fifty-one separate elections — one in each state and one in Washington, DC. Each with different rules and regulations, and no national elections commission to tell the world who wins. How, then, to quickly and accurately determine who won the highest office in the land?
That’s where the news media come in — and have done so since 1848, when The Associated Press declared the election of Zachary Taylor as president.
The Electoral College actually chooses the president under the U.S. Constitution, acting in a process that starts with the popular vote across the republic. But its work takes weeks. In that strange vacuum created by a federalist system and worsened — in the 1800s — by the slow counting and communicating of returns, news organizations emerged as major players in first, collecting and adding together the vote from each state’s election officials around the country, then announcing the victor based on that vote count.
Lots of people seem surprised by that these days, including President Donald Trump. After The Associated Press and the major U.S. television networks called the presidential race for Democrat Joe Biden, Trump tweeted: Since when does the media “call who the next president will be”?
Here’s a look at how that system came to be.
https://apnews.com/article/why-does-media-call-races-us-elections-20e9b5688aa0b7404648ea74b1c2f4dc