Track Election Results on Your Phone Without Breaking Your Brain

As if you needed another reminder: Tomorrow is election day. Most websites you read, and social media apps you use, and politically minded friends you talk to are going to be on high alert. For the sake of your sanity, you should strongly consider going dark: Turn off your mobile and web notifications and just pretend like it’s any other day as best you can. (After you’ve voted, of course.)

If you really can’t get away (or don’t want to), try to keep your political notifications focused on just one source—preferably one that respects the sanctity of push notifications. We recommend checking out the stress-reducing way The Guardian is handling election results in its app.

Rather than bombarding you with a new push notification for every update or headline, The Guardian’s single election update screen will sit on the lock screen of your iOS or Android device to serve as your single source for election results that you can check only when you want to. That sounds a lot better than getting bombarded by every news app you use whenever there’s a new piece of information on election night

As for what you’ll find in this notification, The Guardian says:

“If you sign up, you’ll receive a single continuously updating notification that will sit on your phone’s lock screen as results come in on election night and beyond. The notification will show the most up-to-date numbers of electoral votes won and states called, as well as an indication of which swing states have been called, and the breakdown of the popular vote between the two top candidates.

You will also be able to expand the alert to see a data visualization showing the electoral vote and options to tap through to the Guardian liveblog or a page of full results.”

G/O Media may get a commission

If the results are too close to call by the end of the night (or are contested, dragging the whole thing out for days or weeks), The Guardian’s tracker will stay active as long as the results are unclear.

You can download the Guardian’s app on Apple’s App Store or Google’s Play Store, you’ll find easy instructions for enabling the election-results tracker in The Guardian’s post, and the app is free for anyone to use. Hopefully, this will help you manage some of the election-day anxieties you’re probably already starting to feel.

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