# How Election Results Are Transmitted and Reported [[How a Ballot Is Counted]] ends at the moment a tabulator in a precinct produces a number. This map begins there and follows that number out of the room: onto a paper tape and a sealed memory device, into a car or a cellular modem, through a county accumulation system, onto a county website, sometimes into a state feed and sometimes into no state feed at all, and finally into a private news cooperative's database, out of which comes the figure on a television screen. It ends where [[How a Midterm Election Is Certified]] begins, and the two paths never touch. The single structural fact this map exists to show: **the number the country watches on election night is produced entirely by private organizations operating outside the law that governs the election.** There is no federal statute on the subject. [[Help America Vote Act]] Title III regulates the machine that counts and says nothing about the wire that carries the count. No federal law requires a state, a county or a precinct to publish an unofficial result, sets a deadline for doing so, specifies a format, or provides a remedy if the number published is wrong — because an unofficial result is not a legal instrument and correcting it changes nothing. The legally operative documents arrive weeks later and by a different route: for a Senate seat a governor's certificate under seal, sent to the President of the Senate under **2 U.S.C. § 1a**; for a House seat credentials from which the Clerk of the preceding House builds a roll under **2 U.S.C. § 26**, with each chamber the final judge of its own returns under Article I § 5. Two things make 2026 the right year to draw this. First, **the consolidation**: on 15 October 2025 ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN joined Fox News in buying election results data from the [[Associated Press]] for the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election — the first time since 2016 that every major broadcast network and most major cable networks will read from the same vendor's count. Second, **the absence**: in Wisconsin, a state decided by four figures in two of the last three presidential cycles, there is no statewide election-night reporting system at all, the [[Wisconsin Elections Commission]] publishes no election-night feed, and the state's own public guidance says the aggregate most people will see comes from the AP newswire compiled out of 72 county websites. Put together: for at least one battleground state, the only election-night total that exists is a wire service's, and there is no public-sector number to check it against. > [!note] How to read this chart > `──▶` = the main path · `└─▶` = a branch or consequence · `◇` = a decision point · `⚑` = a load-bearing stage · `◈` = a stage that exists in practice but appears on no official diagram · `⊘` = an obligation the statute states with no remedy attached · `▽` = **a private organization performing, with no legal role of any kind, the step the public takes to be official** — the recurring shape of this map, and a new symbol for the series · `[ ]` = a dated note or caveat. Stage numbers run in the order a number travels. Everything inside the fence is plain text; linked entities appear in the prose, Notes and See also. No current officeholder is named inside the fence, because no seat on this path is load-bearing — the two county clerks whose modems failed in August 2026 appear in Note 3, where the source can travel with the name. ``` HOW ELECTION RESULTS ARE TRANSMITTED AND REPORTED (as of 2 October 2026) │ Legend: ──▶ main path └─▶ branch/consequence ◇ decision ⚑ load-bearing │ ◈ undiagrammed stage ⊘ obligation stated with no remedy attached │ ▽ a private organization with NO legal role performing the step the │ public takes to be official │ Authority: none federal. No provision of the Help America Vote Act, the National │ Voter Registration Act, the Voting Rights Act or Title 52 governs the │ transmission or publication of an unofficial result. Everything on │ stages 1-6 is state statute, state administrative rule, or a county │ procedure manual. Stages 7-8 are governed by nothing at all. │ Scale: ~8,000 local election jurisdictions reporting at once · 51 reporting │ regimes · 1 private cooperative now supplying the count to all five │ major television networks · federal statutes on this path: zero. │ ■ 1. PRECINCT CLOSEOUT ⚑ the only point at which a number and its paper coexist │ Polls close. The tabulator is closed out and prints the RESULTS TAPE — the │ precinct's own totals, on paper, signed by the poll workers present. │ ├─ The tape is compared against the ZERO REPORT printed before voting opened │ │ and against the poll book's count of voters processed. │ ├─ In many states a copy of the tape is POSTED AT THE POLLING PLACE, which is │ │ the only moment in the entire process when a citizen can read a number at │ │ the place it was produced, before anyone has moved it. │ └─ ⊘ Where the posted tape and the later published county figure disagree, no │ state provides a procedure by which a member of the public who noticed can │ compel an explanation. The canvass may catch it. Nothing makes it look. │ ├─▶ 2. THE MEDIA AND THE SEAL ⚑ │ The count leaves the tabulator on a removable device — a memory card, a USB │ module, or a vendor-specific cartridge — which is removed, placed in a │ numbered security envelope or transfer case, and SEALED, with the seal number │ written on a chain-of-custody form signed by whoever sealed it. │ └─▶ From here forward there are two artifacts travelling: the PAPER BALLOTS, │ which are evidence and are retained 22 months under 52 U.S.C. § 20701, │ and the ELECTRONIC TOTALS, which are a report and are retained under │ whatever the state says. They do not necessarily travel together, and in │ most jurisdictions they do not. │ ├─▶ 3. ◇ HOW DOES THE NUMBER REACH THE COUNTY? ⚑ the fork the whole map turns on │ │ │ ├─ (a) PHYSICAL TRANSPORT — the default, and in a growing number of states │ │ the only lawful method. │ │ ──▶ sealed device + signed tape, hand-carried to the county election │ │ office, commonly under a TWO-PERSON RULE requiring two people of │ │ opposite party affiliation in the vehicle. │ │ ──▶ receipt logged, seal number checked against the form, custody │ │ transferred by signature. │ │ └─▶ ◇ seal number does not match? → the device is set aside and the │ │ precinct's paper is the fallback record. Who investigates, and │ │ whether anyone outside the office is told, is a county manual │ │ question with ~8,000 different answers. │ │ │ └─ (b) ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION — modem, cellular modem, or fax modem, used │ to send the unofficial totals ahead of the device that still has to be │ driven in afterward. │ ──▶ the transmitted number populates the county system within minutes; │ the sealed device arrives later and is what is actually canvassed. │ ──▶ So the modem never transmits a legal result. It transmits a │ PREVIEW, and the thing it is a preview of is still in a car. │ └─▶ ◇ transmission fails? → fall back to (a), or to a telephone call │ from the municipal clerk. [Aug 2026: both happened in Wisconsin — │ see Note 3.] │ └─▶ Voluntary Voting System Guidelines 2.0 req. 15-4-C forbids this: │ a system in its voting configuration may carry no wireless │ drivers, and the EAC's own guidance states that VVSG 2.0 │ "expressly prohibits" wireless transmission of unofficial results │ in a certified system. VVSG 2.0 is VOLUNTARY, three systems in the │ country are certified to it, and the body that writes it has had │ no commissioners since 9 July 2026. See closing block C. │ ├─▶ 4. THE COUNTY ELECTION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM ⚑ │ The accumulation point. The county EMS reads each precinct's device, adds the │ precinct totals to the running county total, and merges them with the piles the │ precincts never had: early-vote and mail results produced at a central count │ facility, and later the provisional and cured ballots. │ ├─ This machine is ordinarily air-gapped from the internet by policy, which is │ │ why stage 5 requires a deliberate EXPORT rather than a connection. │ └─ ◈ The merge itself appears on no official diagram and is the stage at which │ the published number stops corresponding to any single physical artifact. │ ├─▶ 5. THE COUNTY'S PUBLIC POSTING ◈ ▽ in part │ The county exports an unofficial results file and publishes it, almost always │ through a commercial election-night-reporting product rather than infrastructure │ the county built: Clarity Elections (Civix) and Scytl are the two names most │ American counties' results pages run on, and the vendor's hostname rather than │ the county's is frequently what a voter's browser shows. │ ├─ Format, refresh interval, and whether precinct-level detail is published at │ │ all are county choices. Several states set a clock: Wisconsin gives a │ │ municipal clerk two hours from tabulation to report to the county clerk, and │ │ the county clerk two hours from receipt to post to the county website. │ └─▶ ▽ The page a voter reads as "the official results" is a vendor's web │ application displaying a file the county exported. It is a convenience │ publication. It is not a return, and nothing legal depends on it. │ ├─▶ 6. ◇ IS THERE A STATE FEED? ⚑ and the answer is not always yes │ │ │ ├─ YES — most states. A state election office ingests county uploads and │ │ publishes a statewide unofficial dashboard. North Carolina is the clean │ │ example: precinct results hand-delivered to county offices between │ │ 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., counties uploading to the State Board's dashboard │ │ between 8:30 p.m. and 1:00 a.m., roughly 98% of ballots reflected by the │ │ end of the night, and the State Board's own standing language that │ │ "election night results are always unofficial." │ │ │ └─ NO — and Wisconsin is the case that matters. ⚑⚑ │ The Wisconsin Elections Commission publishes NO election-night feed. │ There has never been a statewide system for reporting unofficial │ results. Counties post to 72 separate county websites, drawing from │ 1,850 municipalities. The WEC's own public guidance directs readers to │ the Associated Press newswire, compiled from those county sites, as │ where the aggregate will be found. │ └─▶ ▽ In a presidential battleground, on election night, the only │ statewide total in existence is a private news cooperative's. │ ├─▶ 7. THE PRIVATE AGGREGATOR ▽ ⚑ the stage nobody legislated and everybody reads │ The AP operation, which is now the count for essentially all of American │ television (see closing block A). Two inputs, run in parallel: │ ├─ ~4,000 STRINGERS — temporary freelancers with standing relationships to │ │ county clerks, who telephone county-level totals in to the AP's vote-entry │ │ centers, where hundreds of clerks key them and challenge inconsistencies. │ ├─ AUTOMATED INGESTION — the same clerks and systems scraping and reading the │ │ county and state pages produced at stages 5 and 6. │ ├─ VALIDATION — cross-checks against each other and against prior-cycle │ │ results; automated flags where reported votes exceed registered voters in a │ │ county, escalating to a supervisor. │ └─▶ ▽ This database, not any government system, is the national count. More │ than 7,000 races; more than 5,000 people deployed on election night 2024; │ a reported 99.9% accuracy that cycle, and a published retraction record │ (CA-21, 2018) when it is wrong. │ ├─▶ 8. THE DECISION DESKS ▽ ⚑ the call, which is an editorial act │ A race CALL is not a count and not a certification. It is a published │ prediction that the trailing candidate cannot catch up, made by analysts │ reading the stage-7 feed against turnout models and the composition of the │ vote not yet reported. │ ├─ AP's desk: ~60 analysts, race callers and editors; no single person may │ │ call a top race; a contest inside roughly 0.5 points is declared │ │ "too close to call" rather than called. │ ├─ Each network runs its OWN desk on the SAME AP feed and may call a race │ │ earlier, later, or not at all. NBC's desk states a 99.5% confidence │ │ threshold. MSNBC/MS NOW uses NBC's desk. NewsNation has used the │ │ independent Decision Desk HQ, first to call the 2024 presidential result. │ ├─ Running alongside and OFTEN CONFUSED WITH this: the survey layer. The exit │ │ poll is a different instrument on a different path — AP VoteCast, and the │ │ National Election Pool product rebranded The Voter Poll by SSRS after SSRS │ │ acquired Edison Research in 2025. It describes WHO voted and WHY. It does │ │ not count ballots and appears on this map only to be set aside. │ └─▶ ⊘ A call carries no legal consequence whatsoever. It cannot be appealed, │ it binds nobody, it creates no office, and a wrong one is corrected by │ the news organization issuing a correction. Its only real force is │ expectation: a result that later differs from a call is read by much of │ the public as a result that changed. │ └─▶ 9. THE PATH THAT ACTUALLY DECIDES — which started at stage 1 and went the other way, and on which nothing above appears. county canvass of the paper and the devices ──▶ county board of canvassers certifies ──▶ state canvass and certification ──▶ SENATE: governor certifies the election under the seal of the State to the President of the Senate — 2 U.S.C. § 1a, countersigned under § 1b ──▶ HOUSE: credentials to the Clerk of the preceding House, who places the name on the roll of Representatives-elect — 2 U.S.C. § 26 ──▶ each chamber is the final judge of the elections and returns of its own members — U.S. Const. art. I, § 5 ⚑ Mapped in full at How a Midterm Election Is Certified. The point here is the DISCONNECTION: no step in stages 5 through 8 is an input to any step in stage 9, and no step in stage 9 refers back to a number published on election night. The two paths run in parallel and never meet. ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ CLOSING BLOCK A — THE 2026 CONSOLIDATION: ONE COUNT, FIVE SCREENS ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ │ 15 Oct 2025: ABC News, CBS News, NBC News and CNN announced they would take │ election results data from the Associated Press for the 2026 midterms and the │ 2028 presidential election, joining Fox News, which had done so since 2017. │ Reported as the first time since 2016 that all major broadcast networks and most │ major cable networks would use the same data vendor. │ │ WHAT THIS CHANGED AND WHAT IT DID NOT │ changed: the COUNT. One organization's stage-7 database now feeds │ essentially every television screen in the country. │ did not change: the CALLS. Each network still runs its own stage-8 desk, so │ networks can still disagree about when a race is decided — they │ now disagree about the same numbers. │ │ THE ARGUMENT FOR IT, in its own terms: one trusted source reduces the space in │ which competing numbers become evidence of fraud. Divergent vendor feeds in 2020 │ were raw material for exactly that claim. │ │ THE STRUCTURAL COST, which is the finding: the resilience that came from several │ independent counts is gone. A national election-night count now has a single │ point of failure, and that point is a private cooperative that answers to its │ members, publishes its own methodology, and is accountable to no election │ authority anywhere — because, per the authority line at the top of this map, │ there is no election authority with jurisdiction over it. │ │ [Note the predecessor. The National Election Pool was formed in 2003 to replace │ the Voter News Service, which disbanded that year after the 2000 Florida │ calls. The institutional memory of what a shared election-night apparatus can │ get wrong is specifically the memory of a shared apparatus.] ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ CLOSING BLOCK B — THE BATTLEGROUND WITH NO NUMBER OF ITS OWN ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ │ Wisconsin, 2026: │ statewide election-night reporting system .......... none, and never has been │ WEC election-night feed ............................ none │ where the state's own guidance points the public ... the AP newswire │ county websites to aggregate ....................... 72 │ municipalities reporting into them ................. 1,850 │ statutory clock .................................... 2 hours municipal→county, │ 2 hours county→website │ certification deadline, Nov 2026 general ........... 1 December 2026 │ │ The consequence is not that Wisconsin's count is unreliable. The canvass at stage │ 9 is thorough and the certified number is sound. The consequence is EPISTEMIC: on │ election night there is exactly one statewide Wisconsin total in the world, a │ private organization computed it, and there is no public-sector figure to compare │ it with. Every dispute about the Wisconsin number on election night is therefore a │ dispute about a wire service's arithmetic, conducted in the absence of the thing │ that would settle it. │ │ And the drift on top of it. Wisconsin may not open a mail envelope before │ election morning, so large central-count municipalities post their absentee │ totals in one block late at night — the pattern reliably described as a │ "late-night ballot dump" for ballots that arrived lawfully before the 8 p.m. │ deadline. The mechanism is mapped at How a Ballot Is Counted and named at │ Blue Shift. What this map adds is that in Wisconsin that block lands in a │ PRIVATE aggregate, with no official statewide series behind it. ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ CLOSING BLOCK C — THE MODEM: A PROHIBITION THAT BINDS ALMOST NOBODY ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ │ Stage 3(b) is the most-litigated and least-regulated step on this map. │ │ THE FEDERAL ANSWER EXISTS AND DOES NOT APPLY. VVSG 2.0 requirement 15-4-C │ requires that a system in its voting configuration carry no wireless drivers and │ that wireless subsystems be physically switchable off; EAC guidance states the │ standard "expressly prohibits" wireless transmission of unofficial results in a │ certified system. But VVSG 2.0 is voluntary, only three systems in the country │ (four certificates) are certified to it as of late Sep 2026 against 81 under older │ guidelines, nationwide 2.0 deployment is not expected before roughly 2029, and │ since 9 July 2026 the Election Assistance Commission has had no commissioners at │ all and cannot act. │ │ THE STATE ANSWER IS BEING FOUGHT OVER AND IS NOT ARRIVING. Arizona SB 1037 │ (2026) — "Voting; equipment; internet; custody; violation" — would have required │ tabulation equipment to operate with no internet connectivity, plus tamper-proof │ port seals, chain-of-custody documentation, continuous publicly posted video of │ counting centers, unique user credentials, audit logs and 22-month retention. │ It cleared the legislature 11 June 2026 and was vetoed 19 June 2026. │ │ THE PRACTICAL ANSWER ARRIVED BY ITSELF, IN AUGUST. Modem transmission failed in │ two Wisconsin counties in the August 2026 primary, both running the same vendor's │ equipment. One county reverted to telephone collection and did not have complete │ results until late the following morning; the other told municipal clerks to │ drive the results in and had them by about 10:30 p.m. the same night. See Note 3. │ │ ⚑ Which is the finding: the fallback was faster than the failure, the fallback is │ what the law in every state already contemplates, and the only thing the modem │ ever bought was the first hour of the evening — the hour at stages 7 and 8, on │ the only part of this map that no statute reaches. ════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ ``` ## Notes - **Note 1 — the finding, stated plainly: this lane is not under-regulated, it is unregulated.** The vault has now found three different shapes of federal absence in the election-mechanics cluster, and they are worth keeping distinct. [[How a Voting System Is Certified and Decertified]] found a *voluntary* standard: a real federal document that a state may simply decline to adopt. [[How a Ballot Is Counted]] found *hollow commands*: four federal statutes requiring that a rule exist and saying nothing about its content. This map finds the third and simplest case — **no federal instrument of any kind.** There is no HAVA provision, no Title 52 section, no EAC guidance document and no regulation addressing the transmission or publication of an unofficial election result. The reason is coherent: an unofficial result has no legal effect, so Congress never needed to govern it. The reason is also the problem, because the number with no legal effect is the only number almost anyone sees, and the stage that produces it is run by organizations over which no election authority has jurisdiction. - **Note 2 — the 2026 consolidation, verified to two sources.** Axios (15 October 2025) and TheWrap (15 October 2025) both report the announcement that ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN would use [[Associated Press]] election results data for 2026 and 2028, joining [[Fox News]]; Axios characterizes it as the first time since 2016 that all major broadcast networks and most major cable networks would share a data vendor, and notes AP counted and called nearly 7,000 races at a reported 99.9% accuracy in 2024 with more than 5,000 people deployed, having created a dedicated elections business unit in January 2025. Keep two distinctions straight that most coverage blurs. First, **the count and the call are different products**: the networks bought the count, and each kept its own [[Decision Desk HQ]]-style desk, so divergent calls on identical numbers remain possible and likely. Second, **the count and the survey are different paths**: the [[National Election Pool]] exit-poll operation did not end — [[SSRS]] acquired [[Edison Research]] in 2025, AP and Fox rejoined the survey consortium for the 2025 off-year elections, and the instrument now runs as The Voter Poll by SSRS. So the vote-count consolidation and the survey re-consolidation happened in the same year in opposite directions, and [[AP VoteCast]] continues alongside both. - **Note 3 — August 2026, Wisconsin: the live failure of stage 3(b), and the officials' own conclusion.** In the August 2026 primary, modem transmission of unofficial results broke in **Green County** and **Winnebago County**, both running [[Liberty Vote]] equipment — the vendor formerly known as [[Dominion Voting Systems]], acquired in October 2025 by [[Scott Leiendecker]], a former Republican election official and founder of the Missouri election-technology firm KNOWiNK, who said on acquisition that he would push for paper ballots. In Green County, Clerk Arianna Voegel could not resolve the failure, telephoned all 24 municipal clerks, got most responses only the next morning, came in at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday and did not have complete results until about 11:30 a.m. In Winnebago County, Clerk Julie Barthels instructed municipal clerks to drive their results to the county office and had the last delivery by about 10:30 p.m. on election night. Voegel's assessment of her own contingency is the line worth keeping: *"Even if we determine what the cause of this issue is, I think we're still going to plan on that for the general election."* The county that abandoned the modem fastest finished the same night; the county that waited on it finished the next day. That is the empirical content of closing block C. - **Note 4 — what the posted precinct tape is, and why it is the most interesting document on the map.** Stage 1 is the only point where a number and the physical thing that produced it exist in the same place at the same time, readable by a member of the public who has not been let into any secured facility. It is a genuine transparency mechanism and it is also an orphan: in most states no procedure exists by which a citizen who photographs a tape and finds it inconsistent with the county's published figure can compel anyone to reconcile the two. The canvass at stage 9 is designed to catch the discrepancy on its own; it is not designed to answer the person who found it. The [[Election Denialism]] movement's most durable organizing artifact — the photographed tape that "doesn't match" — exploits precisely that gap, and the gap is procedural rather than evidentiary: the tape usually does match, and there is no office whose job is to say so. - **Note 5 — the vendor layer at stage 5, asserted only as far as it can be.** The public results page most American counties publish is a commercial product: Clarity Elections, sold by [[Civix]], and Scytl's election-night reporting line are the two that dominate, and county pages are routinely served from the vendor's own hostname rather than the county's. Civix claims its election-management platform is "used by more states than any other" and publishes no number; no reliable public count of jurisdictions by ENR vendor was located, so none is asserted here. The structural point survives the missing figure: the artifact a voter reads as the official result is a vendor web application rendering an export, and the county's legal return is a different document that the voter will never see. - **Note 6 — the legal endpoint, quoted, because it is short and almost nobody has read it.** **2 U.S.C. § 1a**: *"It shall be the duty of the executive of the State from which any Senator has been chosen to certify his election, under the seal of the State, to the President of the Senate of the United States."* **2 U.S.C. § 26** directs the Clerk of the preceding House to make a roll of the Representatives-elect bearing *"the names of those persons, and of such persons only, whose credentials show that they were regularly elected in accordance with the laws of their States respectively, or the laws of the United States."* Article I § 5 makes each chamber the judge of its own elections and returns. Three short provisions are the whole federal law of who takes a seat, and none of them contains the word "results," a deadline tied to election night, or any reference to a published count. See [[Certificate of Election]] and [[How a Midterm Election Is Certified]]. - **Note 7 — deliberately left open.** (i) **No national count of jurisdictions permitting modem transmission is asserted.** [[Verified Voting]] maintains the standing dataset and no current aggregate by state was publicly obtainable; the practice is known to persist in Wisconsin as of August 2026 and is known to have been banned by statute or rule in a number of states, and the map says only that. (ii) Whether Wisconsin's two August failures shared a single root cause, and whether the vendor published a finding, was not established. (iii) No comparable table of state statutory deadlines for publishing unofficial results exists in any source located here; Wisconsin's two-hour rule and North Carolina's upload window are given as examples rather than as the ends of a range. (iv) Whether any state requires its election authority to publish an election-night aggregate at all — as distinct from permitting it — is **[unconfirmed]** and is the sharpest remaining question, because Wisconsin demonstrates that at least one state requires nothing of the kind. (v) Ballotpedia's count of **419 election bills enacted by the states in 2026** is cited by secondary coverage and not independently verified here; it is offered only as a scale marker for how much state legislating is happening in this area while the federal position remains empty. - **Note 8 — what this map deliberately excludes.** The count itself, mapped at [[How a Ballot Is Counted]]. The certification and canvass, mapped at [[How a Midterm Election Is Certified]]. The chain of custody treated as a security structure, with seals, logs and the 22-month retention regime as its subject rather than as a stage — a separate subject. The post-election audit layer. Recount procedure, which has its own term page at [[Recount]]. The presidential path's certificates of ascertainment and the Electoral Count Reform Act, mapped at [[Electoral College Process Flow]] and irrelevant to a midterm. - **Note — the survey does touch the call (added 2026-10-06).** The map's stage-8 branch says the survey layer "does not count ballots," which is right. It should not be read as "plays no part in calls." AP's explainer says it calls lopsided races at poll close only if [[AP VoteCast]] "confirms the expected result," and holds the call if the survey shows a deviation. NBC's desk uses exit-poll data the same way. Competitive races are called from the count. See [[AP VoteCast]] and [[Exit Poll]]. ## See also - [[How a Ballot Is Counted]] — the map immediately upstream: this one begins at the number its last stage produces - [[Election Ballot Chain of Custody Flow]] — the other artifact that leaves the precinct at stage 2: the paper, which travels on different rules, is retained 22 months, and is the only thing a recount or audit can go back to - [[How a Midterm Election Is Certified]] — the map that is stage 9, and the path the television number never touches - [[How a Voting System Is Certified and Decertified]] — how the machine at stage 1 and the modem at stage 3(b) became legal to use, and where VVSG 2.0's voluntariness is mapped in full - [[How a Candidate Gets on the Ballot]] — how the names being reported here got printed - [[State Election Administration Tree]] — the offices that run stages 1 through 6 - [[Electoral College Process Flow]] — the presidential reporting path this map's midterm case excludes - [[Associated Press]] — the stage-7 aggregator that is, from 2026, the count for all five major networks - [[National Election Pool]] · [[Edison Research]] · [[SSRS]] · [[AP VoteCast]] · [[Exit Poll]] — the survey layer at stage 8 that is not a count - [[Decision Desk HQ]] — the independent desk that called the 2024 presidential race first - [[ABC News]] · [[CBS News]] · [[NBC News]] · [[CNN]] · [[Fox News]] · [[NewsNation]] · [[Reuters]] — the organizations running stage 8 - [[Election Management System]] — the county accumulation system at stage 4 - [[Civix]] — the stage-5 reporting vendor whose product most county results pages are - [[Liberty Vote]] · [[Dominion Voting Systems]] · [[Scott Leiendecker]] — the vendor whose modems failed in August 2026, and who now owns it - [[Election Systems & Software]] · [[Hart InterCivic]] — the other two vendors whose equipment produces the stage-1 tape - [[Wisconsin Elections Commission]] — the state election authority that publishes no election-night feed - [[Election Assistance Commission]] — the body that wrote the wireless prohibition and has had no commissioners since July 2026 - [[Voluntary Voting System Guidelines]] — requirement 15-4-C, and why it binds almost nobody - [[Help America Vote Act]] — Title III, which regulates the tabulator and not the wire - [[Certificate of Election]] — the instrument at stage 9 that actually decides - [[Election Canvass]] · [[Election Certification]] · [[Blue Shift]] · [[Recount]] · [[Risk-Limiting Audit]] · [[Logic and Accuracy Testing]] — the terms on and adjacent to this map - [[Mail-in Voting]] — the pile whose late arrival lands in a private aggregate in Wisconsin - [[Mark Finchem]] · [[Katie Hobbs]] — the sponsor and the vetoing governor of Arizona SB 1037 (2026) - [[Election Denialism]] — the movement that works stages 1, 3(b) and 7 - [[2026 Midterms Hub]] — the cycle this map is built for - [[Foundations Hub]] — parent hub for the map series