The Associated Press

AP once again will be the only news organization on election night collecting the vote for the media and delivering it to newspapers and broadcasters.

The press release goes on to explain

The more than 500 AP reporters, editors, videographers, technical support personnel and other staffers involved in covering the presidential, congressional and state elections and counting the votes will be joined and assisted on Nov. 4 by an army of 4,600 local reporters, known as stringers, who will fan out across the country to collect vote results from county clerks and phone them into four regional election tabulation centers -- two in Spokane, Wash., a third at AP headquarters in Manhattan and a fourth in Brooklyn.

But who are they?

The Associated Press is a not-for-profit cooperative, which means it is owned by its 1,500 U.S. daily newspaper members. They elect a board of directors that directs the cooperative.

Under the leadership of

William Dean Singleton – Chairman Vice Chairman and CEO

MediaNews Group Inc.

Denver, Colorado

Mary Junck– Vice Chairman President and CEO

Lee Enterprises, Inc.

Davenport, Iowa

It's a conglomerate:

AP serves 1,700 newspapers and 5,000 radio and television outlets in the United States as well as newspaper, radio and television subscribers internationally. Over the past decade, AP has also sold a selection of its text, photo, audio and video reports to commercial online operations, both closed-end desktops (the Information Services business) and open Web sites (the Digital business). From the beginning, the objective has been to extract supplemental revenue from commercial markets to subsidize more newsgathering and other services for members. This policy has been regularly reviewed and reaffirmed by AP’s Board, mostly recently in 2005.

and after it gathers information from the public, it manages to make it private.

All requests for republication of AP material must be in writing, clearly stating the purpose and manner in which the copy will be used. All republished material must carry AP credit. Unless specifically noted otherwise, all permission is given for one-time use only. No political candidate, political party, political action committee, polemical organization, or any group formed for partisan purpose may use AP copy in any publication. There may be a fee for reprint use.

And this is the outfit that is going to be controlling all information about our votes. You'll recall that after the 2004 election, it wasn't possible to get exit polling data in a timely manner because of their proprietary interests.

The AP has counted votes and declared winners every four years since Zachary Taylor was elected president in 1848. Following the demise of the Voter News Service after the 2002 off-year elections, the AP became the sole source of returns for all media, starting with the 2004 General Election. For a more detailed description of how AP covers the 2008 election, go to election2008

Oh, and one more thing:

"We recognize that this is a once in a quarter century election," said Michael Oreskes, AP Managing Editor for U.S. News. "Through the course of the year we have dug deeply into the dynamics of race and gender and economic fears that are suffusing the electorate. Our pre-election AP-Yahoo! News poll assessing the impact of racial attitudes on the electorate is being cited as the prime source on the issue this year. We plan to carry this work into our preparations for election night."

The script is in the can. This election is about race and gender and fear. Regardless of how hard candidates have tried to address real issues and how to solve real problems like war and disease and climate change and energy production, the voters are presumed to be fixated on heritable personal traits--not even on whether candidates tell the truth or lie. So, maybe Ms. West down in Orlando and hubby Wade have got it right.

Television establishes buying trends, creates public preferences, and drives public opinion. Television news sets the national mood, links important political and commercial centers around the world and is even so powerful it decides the outcome of elections long before the first voter steps into the voting booth.