Election 2024: Voting in America

In the 2024 general election, the AP will declare winners in nearly 2,000 uncontested races, compared with about 4,500 contested races.

Before there was a FiveThirtyEight model, or a New York Times election night needle, or  13 keys revealing “how presidential elections really work,” there was an economist named Louis Bean.

As thousands of counties and towns report vote totals, it can be hard to figure out when the results reported so far will reflect the outcome.

It is the concept of random selection that allows a relatively small group of survey participants to represent the country as a whole.

Polls are useful tools, but it's important not to overstate their accuracy. After all, a polling organization can't talk to every single person in the country.

Elections are human exercises that, despite all the laws and rules governing how they should run, can sometimes appear to be messy.

Officials seek to demystify a process that in recent years faced intense scrutiny, misinformation and false claims of widespread fraud.

There have been 36 recounts in statewide general elections since America's most famous one in 2000.

A few bellwether counties in the key battleground states are likely to decide the outcome — as they did the past two presidential elections.

The Electoral College is the unique American system of electing presidents. It is different from the popular vote, and it has an outsize impact on how candidates win campaigns. 

An uncommon system of voting could be central to which party controls the U.S. House this fall — or even the presidency.

"This decentralized nature of the elections is itself a deterrent," said Republican Trey Grayson, a former Kentucky secretary of state and the advisory board chair of the Secure Elections Project.

The few counties that have attempted the massive task to count ballots by hand have found the process more time-consuming, expensive and inaccurate than expected.

Voting machines have been at the center of a web of conspiracy theories, with false claims that they were manipulated to steal the presidency from Donald Trump.

So you want to cast a ballot on Election Day? Or maybe vote by mail? It helps to know the rules.

Roughly 50 years ago, about 95% of voters cast their ballots in person on Election Day. That number has fallen gradually as states have provided Americans with more options.