Question: Once the polls close, news networks will start projecting the winner of a state, sometimes almost instantly.

Do they collaborate with other news networks when projecting the winner or do they project the winner independently? For example, CNN projected the winner, do ABC News or NBC also project it?

**Note:** I'm not asking about how do they do it, e.g. using exit polls, etc. Just want to know if all news networks project the winner together or independently.

Answer: 
If descendants of slave owners have to compensate descendants of slaves, many people would find themselves compensating, well, themselves. For example, Barack Obama had at most [one ancestor](http://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/2012/10/08/obama-related-to-americas-first-slave/) who might have been a slave, and that would be through multiple generations of [slave owners](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/mar/04/uselections2008.barackobama). He would be a net payer under that kind of system. 

Donald Trump's ancestors were in Scotland and Germany during slavery. He wouldn't pay anything. On the bright side, he probably doesn't have any enslaved ancestors, so he wouldn't get money either. 

The Bush and Cheney families are distantly related to Obama, so assuming they are related to the same slave owning ancestors, they too would be net payers. 

A proposal from the [Huffington Post](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/reparations-black-americans-slavery_us_56c4dfa9e4b08ffac1276bd7). They want to use a system that requires a person to have claimed to be African-American on a census at least ten years prior and demonstrate an enslaved ancestor. 

Of course, they don't explain how poor people would be able to demonstrate an enslaved ancestor. Perhaps they think it would be all right if middle class and rich African-American families got all the benefits. Nor do they explain how they would verify such ancestral claims. 

A more realistic example from [Gawker](http://gawker.com/what-reparations-in-america-could-look-like-1633066247). Their idea is to use poverty as a proxy for enslavement and pay from the government in general. Middle class and rich African-Americans would receive no reparations. Impoverished descendants of slave owners would pay nothing (presuming they don't pay taxes). 

Of course, that sounds a lot like the existing anti-poverty programs.
It will depend on how well the state has kept records; and it might be a good instance of where the technology of big data could come identifying the *likelihood* of someone being a descendent of slaves.

Even if one doesn't have complete genealogy records, one might be satisfied if such a system is able to positively identify say 90% positively; one could verify such a system by taking a randomised control set of people who are known to be such descendents.