AP Election 2020 Results Will be Recorded on a Blockchain

Oct 15, 2020 at 15:00 UTCUpdated Oct 15, 2020 at 15:24 UTC.The Associated Press's 2020 election results will be recorded on Everipedia's blockchain database, a first for the nearly 200-year-old news agency.

Announced Thursday, the collaboration between the not-for-profit wire service and the tech startup will see more than 7,000 state and national election race calls recorded on a blockchain, with a publicly accessible user interface displaying the results.

Everipedia will publish the final results declared by AP after sufficient votes are counted, said Dwayne Desaulniers, the news organization's director of enterprise, environmental, social and governance and data licensing.

The AP will call the Presidential, Senate, House of Representatives, state houses and other local elections, in a process that could take anywhere from a few hours to days depending on how results are reported by election officials, Desaulniers told CoinDesk in a phone call.

"Most of them will be on election night We're ready to make really great race calls whenever the data and rules tell us that we're good."

It launched its mainnet on top of the EOS blockchain in 2018.While this is the first time AP's election results will be recorded on a blockchain, the company has worked with other blockchain initiatives in the past.

Roughly 4,000 AP employees will be deployed across the U.S. on election day, working from polling centers, city halls and clerk's offices around the country.

On top of the normal races that are tight and require time to call, 2020 has a massive number of voters who are using mail-in ballots so they can avoid large crowds during the pandemic, which might make it difficult for precincts to report their numbers quickly.

For AP and Everipedia, this means the running list of races called will be continuously updated past election day itself.

These markets might be looking for a specific result at a specific time, but it is likely that the projected winner of the election might change depending on how mail-in ballots are counted and when the full results roll in, Kazemian said.