The results you see being reported on the TV on election night are not the "real" numbers. The actual vote counting and reporting is taking place at the local level, and once the results of a particular election are all reported to the appropriate authorities, finalized, and certified, then you have a winner. Those are the only numbers that matter.
But on election night, there's a whole separate media pipeline that is trying to grab these numbers, compile them, and present them to the public as fast as possible -- in an unnecessarily sensational way, in my opinion. It is during this part of the process that errors like the ones you're seeing in the TWH report can be made. Incorrect totals can be reported, or even counties that don't exist. But those errors aren't coming from the actual counting process, they're coming from the media reporting pipeline. There's an incorrect conclusion being drawn here that because the election night media reports are sometimes wrong, that means there must be something wrong with the actual vote totals.
Here's how they do it in the UK: Just like in the US, there is a date and time when votes start to be accepted for counting, and a date and time when votes stop being accepted for counting. Just like in the US, when the date and time that votes stop being accepted has passed, the votes are counted by local officials.
The difference is that in the UK, the count -- and the result -- is not reported AT ALL until it has been completed and finalized. So in the UK, when the polls close, the media sits around for hours twiddling their thumbs until actual finalized results start coming in, at which point they start reporting and analyzing what it all means. The results part of the process is actually very exciting -- in each constituency, they gather all the candidates together on a single stage, and then read out the official totals and declare the winner while they stand there.
But in the US, we add on this extra layer of partial count reporting which creates the sensationalistic appearance of an ongoing horse race AFTER ALL THE VOTES HAVE BEEN CAST, which just doesn't make sense to me.
In both the US and the UK, the end result is exactly the same -- the only count that matters is the official count done by local officials and then certified by the counting authority. If anyone has a problem with that count, they can ask for a recount or an audit or whatever. But in the US we add this unnecessary level of media scrutiny DURING the counting process, which can lead to errors in reporting, which -- as seen above -- can provide fertile ground for conspiracy theories.
The point is that trying to analyze actual, real election results from election night media-reported partial count numbers is fruitless. It doesn't tell you anything useful at all.
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Earl