Read on Twitter
Let's go on an adventure about precincts, the world's worst method of tabulating vote totals. (More on that later).
Precincts are the fundamental geographic boundary used in US elections, nearly universally (some states are special and use townships or other similar geographies). Point is: in most cases, precincts are how counties, and therefore states, organize voters into groups.
Precincts are often drawn by either the local government or local election office in a given county. They are frequently draw, split, collapsed, and changed over the course of a year. In fact, precincts are often collapsed (and then recreated) between elections.
Precincts are related to, but not the same, as polling locations. Sometimes a precinct will have multiple polling locations (Detroit, MI has these) or multiple precincts will share a single polling location (common in rural areas). Polling locations change even more frequently.
