General Discussion

The early numbers are just to try to give viewers and reporters a heads up and have absolutely no official standing.

Where I poll worked the machines were sealed at the end of the day when the polls closed and *after* we wrote down what the results were. We posted the results on the door, so if somebody wanted to run the gamut of precincts they could get their own officially tally. The "we" was an evenly matched set of (D) and (R) poll workers. (This was years ago in NYS.)

When the official canvassing occurred, the machines were again sealed and the numbers written down or downloaded to a thumb drive were compared against the unofficial tallies made on site when the polls closed, and pollworkers called to explain any differences and say what happened. "Oh, we got the numbers backwards," or "Yeah, there was a car horn in the parking lot so maybe I misheard." Whatever.

The machines were not unsealed until all court cases were done, irregularities settled, and the state results officially certified and presented to whomever they get presented to.

Everything that involved even one vote was utterly air-gapped. (Back in 2004 there were claims of "secret modems" installed, but I haven't seen that claim made; and that the thumb drives were corrupted or had two sets of numbers. Whatever.)