By MAYA SWEEDLER

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. general election on Nov. 5 will decide the country’s direction, but it is far from a nationally administered contest. The 50 states and the District of Columbia run their own elections, and each does things a little differently.

Here’s a look at some notable variations in the 2024 election:

Maine and Nebraska allocate electoral votes by congressional district

To win the presidency outright, a candidate must receive at least 270 of the 538 votes in the Electoral College. In 48 states, the statewide winner gets all of that state’s electoral votes, and that’s also the case in the nation’s capital.

In Maine and Nebraska, the candidate who receives the most votes in each congressional district wins one electoral vote from that district. The candidate who wins the statewide vote receives another two.

In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden received three of Maine’s four electoral votes because he won the popular vote in the state and its 1st Congressional District. Republican Donald Trump received one electoral vote from the 2nd Congressional District. Trump won four of Nebraska’s five votes for winning the popular vote in the state as well as its 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts; Biden received one electoral vote for winning the 2nd Congressional District.

Alaska and Maine use ranked choice voting

In ranked choice voting, voters rank candidates for an office in order of preference on the ballot. If no candidate is the first choice for more than 50% of voters, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Voters who chose that candidate as their top pick have their votes redistributed to their next choice. This continues, with the candidate with the fewest votes getting eliminated, until someone emerges with a majority of votes.

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Maine uses ranked choice voting in state-level primaries and for federal offices in the general election. That means Maine voters can rank presidential, Senate and House candidates on ballots that include the Democrat and the Republican who advanced out of their respective party primaries, plus third-party and independent candidates who qualify.

The presidential ballot will include Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris, plus three other candidates. In the six years since implementing ranked choice voting, the state has used it twice in races for Congress in its 2nd Congressional District. The 2020 presidential race did not advance to ranked choice voting, with the winners of the state and in each congressional district exceeding 52% of the vote.

Alaska holds open primaries for statewide offices and sends the top four vote-getters, regardless of party, to the general election, where the winner is decided using ranked choice voting. In all legislative and statewide executive offices, Alaskans can rank up to four names that can include multiple candidates from the same party.

The exception is the presidency, which is eligible for ranked choice voting in Alaska for the first time. This year, there will be eight presidential tickets on the ballot, and Alaskans can rank all candidates if they choose to. The last time the winner of the presidential contest in Alaska failed to surpass 50% of the vote was in 1992, when third-party candidate Ross Perot won almost 20% of the national popular vote.

But in 2022, both Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola and Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski won their elections after both went to ranked choice voting.

Another wrinkle this year? In Alaska, where ranked choice voting was implemented by ballot measure in 2020, there’s a voter initiative on the ballot this fall to repeal it.

In California and Washington, candidates from the same party can face off

California and Washington hold open primaries in which all candidates run on the same ballot and the two top vote-getters advance to the general election, regardless of party. This year, there are two House races in Washington that include candidates of the same party, one with two Republicans and one with two Democrats. There are four in California: three with only Democrats and one with only Republicans.

The winning party in those six districts will be reflected in The Associated Press’ online graphic showing the balance of power in the House at poll close, rather than once a winner is declared because the party of the winner is a foregone conclusion.

Louisiana holds a ‘primary’ on Nov. 5

Louisiana holds what it refers to as its “open primaries” on the same day the rest of the country holds its general election. In Louisiana, all candidates run on the same open primary ballot. Any candidate who earns more than 50% of the vote in the primary wins the seat outright.

If no candidate exceeds 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getters advance to a head-to-head runoff, which can end up pitting two Republicans or two Democrats against each other. Louisiana refers to these contests as its “general election.”

That will change for elections for the U.S. House starting in 2026 when congressional races will have earlier primaries that are open only to registered members of a party. Certain state races will continue to hold open primaries in November, but the change will prevent future members of Congress from waiting until December — a month later than the rest of the country — to know whether they are headed to Washington.

Nebraska has two competing abortion measures on the ballot, but only one can be enacted

In Nebraska, any measure that receives approximately 123,000 valid signatures qualifies for the ballot. This year, two measures relating to abortion met this threshold.

One would enshrine in the Nebraska Constitution the right to have an abortion until fetal viability or later, to protect the health of the pregnant woman. The other would write into the constitution the current 12-week ban, with exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the pregnant woman.

This marks the first time since the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade that a state has measures that seek to roll back abortion rights and protect abortion rights on the ballot at the same time.

It’s possible voters could end up approving both measures. But because they’re competing and therefore cannot both be enshrined in the constitution, the measure with the most “for” votes will be the one adopted, according to the Nebraska secretary of state.

Georgia holds runoff elections if a candidate doesn’t win a majority of votes

In primary elections, a handful of states, mostly in the South, go to runoffs if no candidate receives at least 50% of the vote. In races with more than two candidates, runoffs in those states are common. Several states held primary runoffs this year.

Georgia uses the same rules in general elections. The last three Senate races there went to runoffs because a third-party candidate won enough of the vote to prevent the Republican or Democratic nominee from exceeding 50% of the vote.

But this year, runoff possibilities may be confined to downballot races such as state legislature. There’s no Senate race there this year, and the U.S. House races have only two candidates on the ballot.

Texas, Florida and Michigan report a lot of votes before final polls are closed

This is common in states that span multiple time zones. In most states, polls close at the same time in each time zone.

The AP will not call the winner of a race before all the polls in a jurisdiction are scheduled to close, even if votes already reported before that time make clear who will win the race. So if there is a statewide race in a state where polls close at 8 p.m. local time, but some of the state is in the Eastern time zone and some of the state is in Central time zone, the earliest the AP can call the winner is 8 p.m. CST/9 p.m. EST.

The AP will still show the results as they arrive from counties with closed polls.

Some of the biggest states with split poll close times are Florida, Michigan, Texas and Oregon. Tennessee is an exception, as even though the state is in both the Eastern and the Central time zones, all counties coordinate their voting to conclude at the same time.

Read more about how U.S. elections work at Explaining Election 2024, a series from The Associated Press aimed at helping make sense of the American democracy. The AP receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER

WASHINGTON (AP) — With the American electorate so evenly divided, there will be elections in November close enough that officials will have to recount the votes. Just don’t expect those recounts to change the winner. They rarely do, even when the margins are tiny.

“The (original) count is pretty accurate because the machines work — they work very well,” said Tammy Patrick, a former election official in Arizona who is now with the National Association of Election Officials. “We have recounts and we have audits to make sure we got it right.”

There have been 36 recounts in statewide general elections since America’s most famous recount in 2000. That year, Republican George W. Bush maintained his lead over Democrat Al Gore in Florida — and won the presidency — after a recount was stopped by the Supreme Court.

Since then, only three of those statewide recounts resulted in a new winner, and all three were decided by hundreds of votes, not thousands. That’s according to an Associated Press review of statewide recounts using data from the AP vote count, state election offices and research by Fair Vote, a nonpartisan organization that researches elections and advocates for changes in the way elections are conducted.

Most states allow recounts when the margin between the top candidates falls within a specific margin, such as 0.5 percentage points, even when that means the number of votes separating them is actually in the thousands or even tens of thousands. But there is no precedent for a recount changing the winner in a race with margins that big, at least not since Congress made sweeping changes to U.S. election law in 2002.

The most recent statewide race overturned by a recount was in 2008 in Minnesota. Republican Sen. Norm Coleman led Democrat Al Franken by 215 votes in the initial count, out of more than 2.9 million ballots cast. After a hand recount, Franken won by 225 votes, a shift of 0.02 percentage points, or two one-hundredths of a percentage point.

Among the 36 statewide recounts since 2000, the average change in the winning margin, whether it grew or shrank, was 0.03 percentage points. The biggest shift was 0.11 percentage points in a relatively low turnout race for Vermont auditor in 2006. In that race, incumbent Republican Randy Brock led Democrat Thomas Salmon by 137 votes after the initial count. A recount flipped the race and Salmon won by 102 votes.

Recounts aren’t limited to general elections. They happen in primaries, too.

Earlier this year, the Washington state primary for commissioner of public lands went to a recount after the initial tally had Democrat Dave Upthegrove leading Republican Sue Kuehl Pederson by 51 votes, out of more than 1.9 million votes counted, as they vied for second place.

After the recount, Upthegrove’s lead shrank by just two votes. In Washington’s primary system, the top two candidates advance to the general election, regardless of their political party.

There are even more recounts in downballot races that are sometimes decided by a handful of votes. But even in these lower turnout elections, recounts rarely change the winners.

“Recounts are shifting a very small number of votes,” said Deb Otis, director of research and policy at Fair Vote. “We’re going to see recounts in 2024 that are not going to change the outcome.”

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In Washington’s public lands primary, which was ultimately decided by 49 votes, the AP waited until after the recount to declare the winner because the margin was so close. But in cases where the number of votes separating the top candidates is larger, for example in a statewide race where the candidates are separated by thousands or tens of thousands of votes, the AP may determine that it’s not possible for a recount to reverse the outcome.

Statewide recounts almost always change the results by a few votes.

Patrick said that’s usually because of human error -– either by an election worker or by voters. For example, paper ballots are often rejected because voters didn’t fill them out correctly, but they might later get added to the count after a review.

Paper ballots usually require voters to fill in little bubbles next to their chosen candidate, just like students taking standardized tests. Tabulation machines count the votes by looking for a mark on a very specific area of the ballot, Patrick said. If voters indicate their preference in some other way, like circling their chosen candidate, the machines won’t count the vote.

In some states, bipartisan panels review rejected ballots to see if they can determine the intent of the voter. Some states do these reviews whether there is a recount or not. Other states only do them if there is a recount. Still others never do these reviews and the ballots are simply rejected.

Patrick said she’s seen ballots marked many different ways that weren’t picked up by the tabulation machines, like voters using crayons or marking their choices with a highlighter.

In the Minnesota recount, a voter filed in the dot for Franken but also wrote “Lizard People” in the box for write-in votes. The ballot was rejected.

“Voters do a lot of very interesting things with their ballots,” Patrick said.

Stephen Ohlemacher is AP’s Election Decision Editor.

Read more about how U.S. elections work at Explaining Election 2024, a series from The Associated Press aimed at helping make sense of the American democracy. The AP receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Fifty years ago, the breaded, fried chicken tender as we know it was invented in Manchester, New Hampshire.

At least, that’s what they say in Manchester. Such claims are usually impossible to prove, and the picture is clouded in this case because of the loose way the term chicken tender gets thrown around.

Those who are not particular about poultry terminology use tender to refer to any thin strip of boneless chicken. To people in Manchester and to chicken farmers, though, it means something specific: the tenderloin, a muscle along the backbone that gets very little exercise, hence its tenderness. Restaurants were cooking chicken sticks and chicken fingers before 1974. So far, though, nobody has seriously challenged Manchester’s status as first in the nation to embrace the true tender.

Whether you fully accept the claim or not, though, the floppy strips of white meat in a deep-fried crust do seem to have first appeared around that time. If you were born in the United States more than 50 years ago, you can probably remember a world without chicken tenders. If you grew up later, you can’t.

Today, the chicken tender is not just familiar. It is triumphant. It is a fixture of school lunches and kids’ menus, of all-night diners and gas stations. It can be found at airports, food courts and stadiums. It is a major reason for the double-digit sales growth that Chick-fil-A, Popeyes, Raising Cane’s and other chicken-centric chains have reported for five straight years.

Along the way, the chicken tender has become a symbol, although its meaning is hard to pin down. It can be an icon of simple, straightforward, unpretentious American taste. It can also be an expression of dull, unadventurous food engineered for the lowest common denominator. Restaurants, in their drive to stand out, have expended great effort devising crunchier breading, zestier dipping sauces, more tender tenders. And yet all the sauces in the world will never quite dispel the suspicion that the tender itself is, at heart, not very exciting.

If you share this suspicion, you probably shouldn’t voice it too loudly in Manchester. Last year, the city issued a formal proclamation declaring itself the Chicken Tender Capital of the World.

You can’t go very far in Manchester before bumping into a chicken tender.

They are sold at drive-in seafood shacks, coated in the same golden shell as the whole-belly clams. At a cafe in one of the hulking old mills beside the Merrimack River, they are served over waffles with hot honey and powdered sugar. A corner pizzeria in a residential stretch of northeastern Manchester is renowned for sweet and spicy Asian tenders that seem to be distantly related to General Tso’s chicken.

Like many stories about dishes that became touchstones of American cooking, the tale of the Manchester chicken tender starts with immigrants. In 1917, two men who were born in Greece and settled in Manchester, Arthur Pappas and Louis Canotas, opened a candy store downtown called Puritan. The shop grew and moved and grew some more.

In 1974, Pappas’ children added a large sit-down restaurant behind the shop, the Puritan Backroom. As one of them, Charlie Pappas, built out the menu, a fry cook told him “he had a small piece of chicken he didn’t know what to do with,” according to Charlie Pappas’ son, also named Arthur. This was the tenderloin.

“All it does is align the vertebrae,” said Russ Whitman, director of market reporting at Urner Barry by Expana, which tracks commodity prices. “It’s not used for walking or flapping the wings, so it is a very tender piece of meat.”

In those days, the tenderloin (or, to biologists, the pectoralis minor) was invariably sold with the rest of the breast attached. But if the bird was cut up before cooking, the tender has a habit of coming loose. This is what happened at the Puritan, where, after some tinkering, Charlie Pappas hit on a method for preparing it.

The recipe he devised is, in many ways, a peculiar item for a Greek-owned family restaurant in New England. For one thing, before it is fried, the meat soaks in a pineapple-juice marinade. It’s also served with what the Puritan calls “duck sauce,” a thinnish, yellowish, sweetish liquid. Arthur Pappas said that his father was inspired, in part, by the glowing orange condiment that Chinese restaurants give out with egg rolls, but that he experimented until “he came up with something he thought was a little different.”

In the early years, Charlie Pappas’ tenders were outsold by his barbecued lamb, broiled chicken breast and pizza. But something about the taste of fried white meat dipped in rejiggered duck sauce captured Manchester’s imagination. Word spread. Sales climbed. Imitators arose. Presidential candidates visiting the Puritan for meet-and-greets were obliged to eat a tender or two.

Slowly, inexorably, chicken tenders began to outsell everything else at the Puritan Backroom. At every birthday party, bar mitzvah and wedding celebrated at the restaurant, and there are many, tenders are mandatory. Although many, many tenders are eaten on site, even more leave the premises in takeout orders, sometimes in buckets of 150. On a typical week, Arthur Pappas said, the kitchen fries about 4 tons of tenders — 5 tons during the busiest times of year.

Orders of chicken tenders and French fries with a proprietary condiment it calls duck sauce at the Puritan Backroom in Manchester, N.H., Sept. 26, 2024. The breaded, fried tenderloin turns 50 this year. Yes, there was a time before it was sold in every cafeteria and airport. (Kieran Kesner/The New York Times)

Despite their local fame, fried chicken tenders were almost unknown outside New Hampshire for at least a decade. That changed for good in the 1980s, when Burger King, jealous of the McNugget, introduced its own hand-held morsels of fried chicken. A $20 million advertising campaign for the chain’s new Chicken Tenders worked too well. When locations around the country ran out of chicken, Burger King had to pull the ads.

The campaign had another effect, according to lawyers for the restaurant: It inspired imitators to sell their own chicken tenders. Burger King sued one of them, a poultry-packing firm, for copyright infringement. The trial was more dramatic than the run-of-the-mill intellectual property proceeding; on one of the nine days, a professor showed the courtroom where tenders come from by breaking down a 3-pound plucked chicken with a butcher’s knife.

Burger King won its case — the jury decided that, in effect, the words chicken tender described a product rather than a mere muscle.

One result of the verdict is that tender became a marketing term, like chicken fingers. Many people think the two items are interchangeable, although few of those people live in Manchester. Tender connoisseurs have little trouble knowing when they’ve ordered a pectoralis minor and been given a pectoralis major instead.

Even with Burger King’s help, chicken tenders did not begin to move in meaningful numbers until 1999, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture noticed enough volume to start tracking their price, and then only in the Northeast. It was, at that time, one of the cheapest pieces of the bird by weight, which made it appealing to restaurants.

“Because it was an unused portion of the chicken, it was a value at the time,” Whitman said. Today it is the most expensive cut. (In second place is the wing, another byproduct of chicken breasts that rose to stardom in the same period.)

The tender has other things going for it, too.

“Some of the popularity of the tender is that it is whole-muscle white meat that doesn’t have to be cut or portioned, and when cooked it makes a great hand-held item,” said Terrence O’Keefe, the content director of agribusiness news at WATT Global Media. The tender could, in other words, go from the box to the batter to the deep fryer to the table in minutes.

It wasn’t that easy in 1974, when most chickens in the United States were sold whole, according to data from the National Chicken Council. Since them, there’s been a huge shift toward cut-up parts. As carving technology at poultry plants grew more sophisticated, it became easy for processors to separate the tenders from the rest of the breast and pack them on their own.

One trait of the chicken tender that seems to have very little to do with its success, though, is flavor. On its own, without marinades or sauces, it has almost none. It is a piece of protein so mild it won’t offend anybody, although that, come to think of it, may be what has allowed it to come so far.

You could ask yourself why the least assertive part of the bird is the one Americans love best. You could wonder why no restaurant chain here has devoted itself yet to the French method of stewing gizzards to tenderness in duck fat, or cooking livers in pomegranate molasses in the style of Lebanon. You could get a little downcast thinking about how hard it is to find a good dish of cibrèo, the astonishing Tuscan stew of livers, hearts, coxcombs and testicles.

Or you could get creative, as the Puritan Backroom has done over the years. Besides its classic chicken tenders with duck sauce, the restaurant now offers tenders in a spicy breading, coconut-crusted tenders, and a version made by drenching the original recipe in Buffalo-wing sauce. Other restaurants will fry the meat in crushed cornflakes, Ritz crackers or Cap’n Crunch cereal. One brewpub offers more than a dozen sauces including Korean barbecue and Western apricot.

The front of the Puritan, where the Puritan Backroom is known for its chicken tenders, in Manchester, N.H., Sept. 26, 2024. The breaded, fried tenderloin turns 50 this year. Yes, there was a time before it was sold in every cafeteria and airport. (Kieran Kesner/The New York Times)

There’s something a little ridiculous about Manchester, the city that was once the center of the American industrial revolution, devoting so much energy to fried strips of chicken, and devoting itself so thoroughly that it can claim the title of chicken tender capital of the world. But there’s something impressive about it, too.

“It’s a silly idea,” said Nick Lavallee, who first went before the town aldermen to propose the declaration and kept bringing it up until the politicians surrendered.

“But you ask yourself: Is it true? Yes,” he went on. “Is it important? Sure. Manchester has had an identity problem. Why not point out the things worth celebrating?”

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