AP Elections announced several new additions to the team as The Associated Press continues to strengthen and grow one of its core services.
With a history of accuracy dating back to 1848, AP sets the standard for counting the vote, declaring winners and explaining the results of American elections to the public.
The news organization last month announced that it will provide its gold standard U.S. elections results to ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News, in addition to longstanding elections customer FOX News Media, making AP’s vote count the undisputed source for trusted information on election night.
AP in January created a standalone business unit to help grow its elections business following a record year in 2024, with a 30% increase in customers over the last presidential cycle. In 2024, AP counted the vote and declared winners in nearly 7,000 races with a 99.9% accuracy rate.
These new appointments will help AP continue to serve its elections customers with accurately and timely elections results:
Ashlyn Still, elections news editor
Ashlyn Still is joining AP’s Washington bureau as AP’s elections news editor, where she will lead AP Elections’ journalism on vote counts and election outcomes for both direct-to-consumer audiences and AP customers. She will partner with AP’s Politics, U.S. News and other Washington teams to shape coverage before and after polls close. Ashlyn joins from The Washington Post, where she was deputy elections director during the 2024 campaign.
Sameul Jens, elections data scientist
Samuel Jens is joining AP as an elections data scientist, where he will support analysis and modeling of voter turnout and election data to inform AP’s election coverage. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stony Brook University, with a focus on political psychology and American politics, and previously supported AP during the 2024 election cycle as an expected vote analyst.
Hannah Recht, data journalist
Hannah Recht is joining AP as a data journalist, focused on geographic analysis and visualization of elections data. She has over a decade of experience as a data journalist and visualization developer at KFF Health News, Bloomberg, The Urban Institute, and the Washington Post, where her work included early vote tracking and spatial analysis of public health data.
John (J.J.) Gallagher, elections automation manager
John (J.J.) Gallagher is AP’s elections automation manager, where he leads efforts to automate and streamline election night results collection. Since joining AP Elections in 2018, J.J. has developed and managed AP’s scraping platform, a critically important system that ingests results quickly and accurately from virtually all states. J.J. holds a Master’s degree from New School University and previously worked in media at ABC News, Fox Business News and The New York Times.
Gladys Negrete, elections quality control editor
Gladys Negrete is AP’s elections quality control editor. She joined AP Elections in 2015 as a research and quality control coordinator and has worked on advance turnout trends, demographics, candidate research, vote alerts and AP’s new election night system. Prior to AP, she worked on nonpartisan outreach and voter engagement campaigns. Gladys holds a Master’s degree from the University of California, San Diego.
Simran Parwani, election data visualization designer
Simran Parwani is joining AP as an election data visualization designer. She previously worked as a visual journalist at FiveThirtyEight and Axios, creating original data visualizations on politics, sports, and other topics. An active member of the data visualization community, Simran has served on the board of directors for the Data Visualization Society and teaches a course at the University of Vermont.
Katie Marriner, elections data visualization developer
Katie Marriner is joining AP as an elections data visualization developer. She has over a decade of experience building interactive tools and graphics in newsrooms, including as a senior visual journalist at FiveThirtyEight, where she contributed to the site’s 2024 general election forecast. Previously, she worked as a data journalist and developer at MarketWatch and The Wall Street Journal.
Hyojin Yoo, elections data visualization developer
Hyojin Yoo is joining AP as an elections data visualization developer. She previously interned on AP’s digital storytelling team, contributing to the polling tracker and a visually rich immersive story on animal sleep, and has interned at the Council on Foreign Relations and worked as a front-end engineer at Studio Pssst. Hyojin is pursuing an M.S. in Data Analysis and Visualization at the CUNY Graduate Center and holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.
