(WXYZ) — With the 2020 General Election just one day away, we wanted to be open and transparent about how we plan to input election results and call races.
Related: Full coverage of the 2020 election
Once the polls close at 8 p.m. in metro Detroit, we have a team of producers and other staff members who will monitor county websites for election results to start flowing in.
Those counties we're covering are listed below. They will also be linked to the county page where we will be getting election results, in case you would like to follow along.
- Lapeer County
- Livingston County
- Macomb County
- Monroe County
- Oakland County
- Sanilac County
- St. Clair County
- Washtenaw County
- Wayne County
As new results come in, they will input the numbers into a program that will feed to results on-air to 7 Action News, TV20 Detroit and online at WXYZ.com.
When it comes to calling a winner of the race, our News Director, Rhonda LaVelle, and Digital Director, Lyle Cifuentes, will make the final call on whether or not a winner is declared.
We will rely on the Associated Press when it comes to making decisions on races, and if the Associated Press declares a winner of a race, we will also declare a winner.
The Associated Press has been counting the vote on election day, in real-time, for more than 170 years. The AP has a network of local stringers across all 50 states that have relationships with local clerks and officials. As an Associated Press member, we will see access to their decisions.
“There is no national election commission in the United States that tells us who won on Election Day,” David Scott, a deputy managing editor who helps oversee AP’s coverage of elections, said. “Statewide results aren’t available in every state, either. If we want to know who the next president will be, we’ve got to do the math ourselves — county by county nationwide.”
As always, we will have 24/7 coverage both on-air and online to get you the latest results from the election, and you can download the WXYZ app on Apple and Google Play to get push alerts when winners are declared. Also, be sure to download our app on Roku, AndroidTV, AppleTV and Amazon Fire TV for overnight coverage of election results.