Election 2024-Explaining Election Day, Digest

EDITORS:

Democracy in America is complicated.

In this year's November general election, voters nationwide will cast roughly 160 million ballots — in several different ways — to pick a president, hundreds of members of Congress and thousands of members of state legislatures, city councils and any number of statewide and local offices. This year's election comes at a moment in the nation's history when the very basics of how America votes is challenged as never before by disinformation and distrust.

To help make sense of the way America picks a president, The Associated Press offers the following package of stories examining and explaining the ins and outs of U.S. elections as the country moves from the campaign season to Election Day to certification and inauguration. The package also includes explanatory stories that cover the role AP plays in counting the vote and declaring winners after polls close.

All stories will be published on Tuesday, Oct. 8, and are available for use any time thereafter. Find all of the AP's Elections content on the U.S. Election 2024 hub on APNewsroom. Find our latest plans on Coverage Plan.

Questions may be directed to Shelley Acoca at sacoca@ap.org.

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ELECTIONS TOP 25

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ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-TOP 25 — From Shenna Bellows to Brian Kemp and dropboxes to the Election Systems & Software DS200, these are the Top 25 people, places, races, dates and things to know about Election Day. By The Associated Press.

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EXPLAINING ELECTION DAY

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ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-HOW AMERICA VOTES — American elections are messy: human exercises conducted by thousands of election officials and volunteers in thousands of jurisdictions nationwide, where roughly 160 million ballots will decide a presidential race that might be determined by a tiny fraction of those votes. Yet that messy, uniquely American system reliably produces certified outcomes that stand up to scrutiny, even in an era of misinformation and hyper-partisanship. By Gary Fields. UPCOMING. Photos.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-PROPHETS — Eager to know who will win the White House, America has embraced a handful of modern day prophets who use polling averages, predictive modeling and betting markets to tell voters what might happen on Election Day. They will all tell you not to place so much faith in their predictions of the future. By Leah Askarinam. UPCOMING. Photos.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-EDGE CASES — Think America conducts its elections more or less the same way from state to state? Think again. A look at the many, many ways in which voters cast ballots and officials count votes on the way to picking a president. By Maya Sweedler. UPCOMING. Photos, video. With: ELECTION 2024-KEY DATES.

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ADVANCE VOTING

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ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-HOW WE VOTE — There was a time when almost everyone cast their ballots in person at a neighborhood polling place on Election Day. This year, the ballots of most voters will be in the box before polls even open. A history of how the act of voting has changed and, along the way, become a partisan issue. By Robert Yoon and Maya Sweedler. UPCOMING. Photos, video. With: ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-HOW WE VOTE-GLANCE.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-WHO CAN VOTE — Eligibility to vote varies from state to state, each setting their own rules governing everything from age, whether you can be a felon, the need to provide a photo ID and, most recently, whether noncitizens may cast a ballot. By David Lieb. UPCOMING: Photos.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-HAND COUNTING — Donald Trump and many local Republican elected officials say they want to count ballots by hand rather than trust machines to tabulate the vote. But hand-counting is actually more prone to error, delays results and requires an intensive and costly staffing effort. Research has shown that using hand counts for every vote on every ballot would actually increase the chances for mistakes and fraud. By Christine Fernando. UPCOMING. Photos, video.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-VOTING MACHINES — Voting machines have been at the center of a web of conspiracy theories that erupted after the 2020 election, with false claims that they were manipulated to steal the presidency from Donald Trump. There was no evidence of widespread fraud or rigged voting machines in that election, and multiple reviews in the battleground states where Trump disputed his loss confirmed the results as accurate. By Christina A. Cassidy. UPCOMING. Photos, video.

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POLLS AND SURVEYS

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ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-POLL SAMPLING — Chances are, you’ve never been contacted for an election poll. But the dozens of high-quality election polls that will be released before Election Day still represent a reasonable estimate — and it's just that, an estimate — of the opinions of all Americans. By Linley Sanders. UPCOMING. Photos.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-THE HORSERACE — The presidential race is close. And that might be about as much as polls are able to tell us this year, when the number of truly persuadable voters is relatively small. The tiny margins of an especially tight race are simply beyond the scientific capabilities of even the best surveys to assess with pinpoint precision. By Linley Sanders. UPCOMING. Photos.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-AP VOTECAST — On election night, the opinions of the American electorate and what issues proved decisive to voters will come from surveys of voters taken as they cast their ballot. At the Associated Press, that survey is called AP VoteCast, and it helps AP and other media organizations explain the “why” of Election Day. By Linley Sanders. UPCOMING. Photos, video.

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COUNTING THE VOTE

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ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-LIKE A PRO — A guide to watching election results like an elections professional. By Leah Askarinam. UPCOMING. Photos.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-WHY THE WAIT — It took Florida and California just minutes after polls closed to start reporting results in the 2020 presidential election. Florida finished a few hours later. It took California a few weeks. Why such a difference? It comes down to different choices two of the nation’s largest states make on what to prioritize when counting the vote. By Maya Sweedler. UPCOMING. Photos, video.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-BELLWETHERS — The important bellwethers of American elections go beyond just the tightest counties. That’s because modern elections are not decided just by swing voters, but also who shows up to vote and where. The bellwether counties to watch include everything from big Democratic cities to Republican-leaning suburbs, plus sprawling counties that include a little bit of everything. By Maya Sweedler. UPCOMING. Photos, video.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-COUNTING THE VOTE — In a nation without a single government agency to handle the mechanics of democracy, The Associated Press has been tallying results in U.S. elections since 1848. In broad strokes, the process is the same today as it was then: AP collects election results at a local level, then adds them all up so America can know as soon as possible who has won. By Maya Sweedler. UPCOMING. Photos, video.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-LIVE STREAMS — It may not be the most riveting video but live streams of the 2024 election are already online, making a patchwork of feeds across the country as elections officials aim to demystify how votes are cast and ballots are counted. By Mike Catalini. UPCOMING: Photos.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-VOTER FRAUD — Voter fraud does happen, but it’s rare, gets caught and can end with a felony conviction. Perhaps most importantly, there is no instance in modern times of any widespread, systemic fraud throwing an election. The nation’s multilayered election processes provide numerous safeguards that allow election officials to detect any signs of fraud. By Ali Swenson. UPCOMING. Photos, video.

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DECLARING WINNERS

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ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-DECISION DESKS — Why does the media play such an outsized role in American elections, counting the vote and declaring winners long before election officials certify the official results weeks after Election Day? By Robert Yoon. UPCOMING. Photos.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-RACE CALLS — One question will be asked over and over again on election night: who won? The Associated Press will answer that question for nearly 7,000 races across the country and up and down the ballot, from president to state ballot measures to a variety of local offices. By Robert Yoon. UPCOMING. Photos, video.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-POLL CLOSE CALLS — Some winners will be declared as soon as polls close on Election Day, a decades-old practice that combines voter survey and a state's political history to jump ahead of the vote count. By Robert Yoon. UPCOMING. Photos, video.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-TURNOUT — The most important data point when it comes to calling races and declaring winners on election night is also the most elusive: just how many people turned out to vote? By Robert Yoon. UPCOMING. Photos, video.

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CERTIFICATION TO INAUGURATION

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ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-RANKED CHOICE — Two states and the nation's largest city will pick winners in November using ranked choice voting, an increasingly popular approach to elections that allows voters to cast a ballot based on their preference among many candidates rather than their single choice for just one. By David Sharp and Maya Sweedler. UPCOMING. Photos.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-RECOUNTS — There will undoubtedly be elections this November so close that officials will have to recount the votes. But while they might offer hope, recounts rarely change the outcome of an election — even when the margins are very close. By Stephen Ohlemacher. UPCOMING. Photos, video.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-LEGAL CHALLENGES — There's no formal role for the U.S. court system in American elections, but ever since the nation's top court stepped into the process in 2000 with a decision that made George W. Bush president, judges have increasingly found themselves involved in Election Day. By Lindsay Whitehurst. UPCOMING. Photos.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-CERTIFICATION — Results reported on Election Day are unofficial until certification, a once uneventful process of vote count review (and some pomp and circumstance) that has become overtly political in some places following Donald Trump's loss four years ago. By Nicholas Riccardi. UPCOMING. Photos.

ELECTION 2024-EXPLAINER-ELECTORAL COLLEGE — Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. So did George W. Bush in 2000. Neither won the popular vote. What put them in power was the Electoral College, a creation of the framers that lives on today. By Mary Clare Jalonick. UPCOMING. Photos, video.

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HOW TO REACH US

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Dallas Cowboys' Brandon Aubrey (17) and the rest of the line watch Aubrey's 65-yard field goal go through the uprights in the first half of an NFL football game against the Baltimore Ravens in Arlington, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeffrey McWhorter)

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A man walks past torn election posters of President Ranil Wickremesinghe at a street in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024.(AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress is allocating more than $100 billion in emergency aid designed to address extensive damage caused by disasters after this week's scramble to find consensus on a government spending bill.

The money comes after back-to-back hurricanes — Helene and Milton — slammed into the southeastern United States this fall, leaving havoc in their wake. But the money would go to much more than just those two storms under the bill signed Saturday by President Joe Biden that keeps the federal government funded through March 14.

The disaster funding looked set to pass earlier this week until President-elect Donald Trump issued new demands that tanked a compromise and threatened a pre-Christmas federal shutdown. A slimmed-down version cleared Congress early Saturday when Republicans abandoned Trump's core request.

Here's a look at what's in the bill for disaster relief and where the money will go:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief fund is essentially the country's checkbook for emergencies. Out of it, the government reimburses states and local governments for things such as removing debris accumulated after hurricanes or overtime costs for firefighters and police who work during disasters.

It also includes money for individual residents, ranging from the $750 payments that disaster survivors can get to $42,500 that some uninsured homeowners can receive to help them rebuild.

Esther Manheimer, mayor of Asheville, the largest city in the North Carolina mountains that was hard hit by Helene, said city officials were pleased to see th additional disaster dollars.

It’s only been four weeks since Asheville residents could drink from and bathe in the water coming out of their faucets. Some businesses in western North Carolina have shuttered permanently or are struggling to survive, and well over 200 roads in the region remain closed.

In a statement earlier in the week, Manheimer emphasized that it was still going to be a long recovery and that "already we see the long-term economic, budgetary and employment impact Helene left in her wake.”

The disaster relief fund was nearly running on fumes after Helene and Milton. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell warned during a Senate hearing in November that the fund was down to $5 billion.

The Biden administration had asked Congress for about $40 billion for the relief fund but the bill eventually passed provides a lower amount, $29 billion.

It’s important to keep in mind that this isn’t the only money for the disaster relief fund, said Stan Gimont, a senior adviser for community recovery at Hagerty Consulting. He used to run the community development block grant program at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

More money can and likely will be designated to the fund later when Congress does a full-year appropriation, he said.

There's also about $21 billion in disaster assistance to help farmers.

North Carolina Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler said earlier this week that he was pleased by the agricultural aid but that the state has a lot of specialty crops such as sweet potatoes and Christmas trees that are generally not covered by federal programs. He said he will have to wait and see what specifically ends up being covered.

“We are still evaluating the bill as there are a lot of nuances in it. The devil is in the details," he said.

Other money will go toward rebuilding damaged roads and highways ($8 billion), while more money (about $12 billion) would go toward helping communities recover through HUD grants.

The block grant money is one of the key funds for homeowners who don’t have insurance or enough insurance to recover from disasters.

There’s also $2.2 billion for low-interest loans for businesses, nonprofits and homeowners trying to rebuild after a disaster.

But the money doesn't go just toward local residents.

For example, there's money for the military to address damage from hurricanes and typhoons and for a new hurricane hunter — the planes used to research hurricanes — and funds to help NASA rebuild hurricane-damaged facilities.

No. The money goes to cover more than those two disasters.

Some of the money is specifically earmarked for certain projects such as $1.5 billion designated for assistance after the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history — the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon fire — and the rebuilding of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.

But a lot of the money also goes more generally toward major disasters that happened in recent years.

The types of disasters covered in the legislation include droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, floods, derechos, and smoke exposure.

Gimont points out that disaster recovery can take a long time so the country is both paying for disasters that happened previously while it prepares for events that will happen in the future.

Take the massive Maui fire, for instance. It decimated the Hawaiian town of Lahaina last year, but Gimont said just the cleanup itself extended into late summer 2024.

Loller reported from Nashville, Tennessee.

FILE- North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, right, and Deanne Criswell, Administrator of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, await the arrival of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris for a briefing on the damage from Hurricane Helene, at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, in Charlotte, N.C., Oct. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)

FILE - Michael Vierra looks at his house after it was destroyed by a wildfire, in Lahaina, Hawaii, Sept. 26, 2023. Authorities in Maui strongly encouraged homeowners to wear protective gear provided by nonprofit groups when visiting their properties to protect against asbestos, lead and other toxic remains of the wildfire. (AP Photo/Mengshin Lin, File)

FILE - Homes consumed in wildfires are seen in Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii, Aug. 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

FILE - As Hurricane Milton approaches, a car sits half-buried in sand in Bradenton Beach, Fla., in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Oct. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)

FILE - This photo provided by the North Carolina Department of Transportation shows the collapsed eastbound lane of I-40 into the Pigeon River in North Carolina near the Tennessee border, Sept. 28, 2024. (N.C. Department of Transportation via AP, File)

FILE - A man walks near a flooded area near the Swannanoa river, effects from Hurricane Helene , Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, in Asheville, N.C. (AP Photo/Erik Verduzco, File)

FILE - Ben Phillips, left, and his wife Becca Phillips scrape mud out of their living room in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, in Marshall, N.C., Oct. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)

FILE - Damage from Hurricane Helene near Asheville, N.C., is seen during an aerial tour for President Joe Biden, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)