Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Exceptional AP coverage of UK elections

of London bureau text and photo staffers, Europe planning desk and visiting text reporters, staff and freelance video journalists and photographers, all of whom worked tirelessly, many through the night, after weeks of buildup to cover every developing line on the U.K. election night and into the following day. In addition to Boris Johnson’s win, the all-formats report included a profile of the Conservative leader, Labour’s implosion, the implications for the Scottish independence movement, key takeaways, the effect on markets and currency, the view from the EU and – working with the team in Washington – a look at what lessons the Democrats can take from these results ahead of the 2020 election. https://apnews.com/Brexit

Best of the States

AP Exclusive: Outdated software makes even new election systems vulnerable to hackers

The source’s text said there was something “really troubling” to pass along.

Tami Abdollah, Washington national security reporter, had just returned to covering cybersecurity – a topic she has followed off-and-on since 2015. What the source told her was big: New election systems purchased across the United States were running on outdated Windows 7 systems, making them vulnerable to hackers.

It was a great tip, but it required a lot of work to determine the scope of the problem. The result was an exclusive text and video package that received huge play and raised alarm among state and national lawmakers. Abdollah revealed that the vast majority of 10,000 election jurisdictions nationwide use Windows 7 or an older operating system to create ballots, program voting machines, tally votes and report counts.

For combining source reporting with meticulous research to break major news on one of the biggest issues ahead of the 2020 election, Abdollah wins this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Trump businesses take a hit since election

for his assessment of how President Trump’s businesses have fared in the first two years of his presidency, determining that his family business has taken a major hit. https://bit.ly/2s7EPR2

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Outstanding all-formats coverage of Spanish election

for distinctive and comprehensive all-formats coverage of the Spanish election, yielding front-page exposure even in Spain’s leading media. And they continued to stand out on the day after the election with an all-formats Only on AP story from the town in southern Spain where the far-right Vox party scored its biggest victory with 30% of the vote.https://bit.ly/2vNDHUFhttps://bit.ly/2Wg12Kbhttps://bit.ly/2Lt0cZG

Best of the Week — First Winner

From vote count to race calls to mood of the electorate, AP commits ‘single largest act of journalism’

AP delivered stellar work on the 2022 midterm elections with fast, accurate vote count and race calling, engaging explanatory journalism, unparalleled insight into the minds of voters thanks to AP VoteCast survey methodology, and ambitious, robust all-formats coverage. That teamwork chronicled an unexpectedly successful election for Democrats and the defeat of many candidates who supported baseless claims of 2020 election fraud.

The key to that performance was collaboration among formats, teams, departments and more across the entire AP, not just on Election Day but in the weeks and months leading up to Nov. 8 and beyond. That effort included a team of 60 race callers, AP’s expanded national politics team and its new democracy team, 30 live video cameras across the U.S., over 80 photographers and much more, all complementing the footprint of AP’s 50-state on-the-ground staff.

For reinforcing the cooperative’s longstanding reputation as the foundation of U.S. election coverage, AP’s vast, tireless U.S. elections team earns Best of the Week — First Winner honors.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP Europe teams dominate EU election coverage

From Paris to Bucharest, all-format teams across Europe delivered robust, speedy and ambitious coverage that captured a changing continent during the high-stakes EU election. Beforehand, they explained why the continent is at a crossroads and how it arrived there. They delivered fast, accurate breaking news when the results started to come in and strong analysis to explain what the votes meant.http://bit.ly/2QzlbZOhttps://www.apnews.com/EuropeanParliament

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Trump campaign staff on 2020 election lies: ‘fan the flame’

reported exclusively on audio provided by a source of a secretly recorded meeting in 2020 of then-President Donald Trump’s Wisconsin campaign team members acknowledging his defeat in the state two days earlier, but also discussing how they planned to “fan the flame” of the lie that he won.Read more.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP reveals lawsuits setting up midterm election challenges

captured the surprising extent of pre-election lawsuits — more than 100 filed around the country, largely by Republicans — as the legal action lays the groundwork for challenges to midterm election results. The suits target rules for mail-in voting, early voting, voter access and registration, and more.White House reporter Long identified the broader trend and also uncovered an entirely unreported GOP strategy of approaching the midterms with thousands of volunteers and lawyers hired across the nation. Her assessment: The legal actions likely preview a contentious post-election period.Read more

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP: White House election party under scrutiny for virus cases

used dogged source work to report on COVID infections among guests at President Donald Trump’s election night party. Election night eventually stretched into five long days in AP’s Washington bureau, leaving political journalists exhausted, but Colvin wasn’t done. She circled back on the East Room party meant to celebrate a Trump victory that never came. Colvin described the event as a classic case of the White House flouting coronavirus guidelines that were drawing new scrutiny after chief of staff Mark Meadows turned out to be among the guests who had tested positive for COVID-19. The story required determined reporting because, as Colvin wrote in the story, “the White House has been increasingly secretive about outbreaks. Many White House and campaign officials, as well as those who attended the election watch party, were kept in the dark” about who had contracted the virus. But within hours, the story proved prophetic as word surfaced that two more prominent attendees, Housing Secretary Ben Carson and campaign adviser David Bossie had also tested positive. In coming days, even more guests at the event tested positive. https://bit.ly/2Hm7Une

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

FBI, in reversal, will alert states to election cyber-attacks

for breaking news of a significant policy change by the FBI: The agency now pledges to alert states of attacks on elections systems and not just the county or local government that is hit. This means that state officials will know about attacks before certifying results in an election. https://bit.ly/2NQIWfC

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Asia team delivers unmatched visuals of Jakarta election protest clashes

for thoughtfully deploying resources to cover multiple pockets of protest across the capital after protesters supporting losing presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto clashed with police. The team used Iris Bambuser and LiveU to capture unmatched images of the chaos and shot from various angles to show the scene with tear gas filling the streets and helicopters dropping water to extinguish fires.https://bit.ly/2Mkondlhttps://bit.ly/2wgY4tv

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP ahead with two scoops on NC election investigation

for putting AP ahead on two major stories related to the investigation of ballot fraud in a 2018 congressional race in North Carolina – first with news that election officials had pressed prosecutors after the 2016 election to charge the man at the center of fraud allegations in 2018, and then obtaining a January 2017 letter predicting that ballot fraud would happen again unless the administration pursued a criminal case.https://bit.ly/2BXS8Inhttps://bit.ly/2R3LaMe

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

States await election security reviews as primaries heat up

for an AP survey of all 50 states that revealed that very few state systems had an election security review from the Department of Homeland Security, even though many have asked for it amid concerns about Russian meddling in this year’s election. http://bit.ly/2rmi8b4

Best of the States

Georgia election server wiped clean – days after lawsuit against officials

Georgia's centralized and aging election system has been the subject of several controversies – most recently in June, when a whistleblower revealed that state contractors had failed to secure an important election server. Hackers could potentially have affected the results of both 2016 races and a special congressional election last June that drew national attention.

The Houston bureau’s Frank Bajak wrote up the initial news of Georgia’s server problem. But that didn't answer the larger question of whether the vulnerable server had actually been hacked, so Bajak developed new sources and kept pressing for more information.

His efforts paid off when a source provided him with an email disclosing that the troubled server had been wiped clean of all data. Even more interesting, this destruction of evidence happened just a few days after a lawsuit was filed seeking a forensic examination of the server in an effort invalidate the state's vulnerable election technology.

For his enterprise and dogged pursuit of the story behind the story, Bajak wins this week’s Best of the States award.

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP Exclusive: US elections chief left behind Kansas scandal

for using emails obtained through a records request and a lawsuit to show that a Kansas election official had an affair with a woman he promoted and used her to skirt oversight of their lavish expenses before moving on to lead the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. http://apne.ws/2enAAeJ

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

Insights from AP VoteCast power coverage of midterm elections

for AP VoteCast, AP’s new survey of the American electorate that debuted in the midterm elections, offering powerful insight into the reasons behind voters’ choices, robustly illustrated with all-formats content generated via text and graphic automation. https://bit.ly/2K206nA

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

State government reporters score on major midterm election issues

Mulvihill broke the news that a record number of women had won their races for state legislative seats around the country, and Lieb gave a clear analysis of the results of gerrymandering in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.http://bit.ly/2RUzzLGhttp://bit.ly/2DNC4fB

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

All-formats coverage of Nigerian election, from postponement through voting

for providing consistently quick, accurate and enterprising all-formats coverage of Nigeria’s long-running elections story. https://bit.ly/2NvEW2Q

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

AP team documents accounts of Belarus election fraud

gained the trust of poll workers in Belarus who gave exclusive, on-camera interviews detailing extensive fraud in the Aug. 9 election. Protesters and opposition politicians have called the election rigged since the moment the results were announced showing authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko won with 80% support. Reports of fraud at the polls have appeared on social media and in some local independent media, but often featured anonymous interviews and piecemeal accounts. Litvinova and Manenkov wanted to go deeper. They reached out to poll workers who at first were too afraid to speak on-the-record and on camera – especially since protesters had been beaten by police and arrested. The pair worked tirelessly to gain the trust of several poll workers, eventually convincing several poll workers to share their stories with the AP, on camera and with still photos by Grits.What the workers told them was stunning: One said she was asked to sign a document summing up the results with the vote totals blank before voting ended for the day. Another who pointed out violations during the vote counting was fired on the spot. A third said he falsified results to favor Lukashenko and was now overcome with guilt for betraying the trust of the voters.

As they worked on this story and continued to cover the protests, Manenkov and AP Russia-based photographer Dmitri Lovetsky were arrested and ordered out of Belarus. Minsk-based photographer Grits and reporter Yuras Karmanau also were arrested and had their press credentials revoked. As a result, the two made the decision to leave Belarus.https://bit.ly/32dyjv0https://bit.ly/2RczmoF

Beat of the Week

(Honorable Mention)

In AP interviews, election emerges as a referendum on race

delivered a bold, smart story exploring how this pivotal presidential election became a referendum on the future of race relations in America.Stafford, a race and ethnicity journalist, gathered a range of local and national voices to examine how the U.S. is being forced to confront systemic racism in an election year in which the coronavirus pandemic, economic uncertainty and police brutality have converged. One of those voices was that of Omari Barksdale, a Black man who was impacted by the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. And more personally, he lost his sister to COVID. Detroit photographer Sancya met with Barksdale and captured him in strong portraits that complemented the text story.Stafford also landed interviews with some notable national figures, including civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton who said the “soul of the nation” was “at risk.” https://bit.ly/3p4Kwf5