EXPLAINER: Why might live election results fluctuate?
By ALI SWENSON
Live vote counts sometimes go up or down on election night. That’s due to human error somewhere between the local election offices and people’s TV and phone screens. Elections workers occasionally transpose two digits, add an extra zero or swap candidate vote counts. Some have seized on this as evidence of fraud. But elections officials, research firms and media outlets have safeguards in place that ensure these minor errors happen rarely and get fixed quickly. For example, the Associated Press employs quality control analysts to monitor and examine results for anomalies.
