There is growing national concern about the risk that election deniers will persuade local officials to refuse to certify legitimate vote results after a by-election. weird situation The events unfolded in Nevada, where a county council commissioner refused to certify his own victory.
Clara Andriola, a Washoe County Board commissioner, won her primary in June by nearly 19 points over her main opponent, Mark Lawson. Lawson requested a recount, which showed the initial count in the race was valid.
Yet at Tuesday’s commission meeting, Andriola sided with two other Republican commissioners in agreeing not to certify the results of her own election.
She said there was “a lot of information that was shared that warrants further investigation,” and that she had to vote her “conscience” and wanted to restore public trust after hearing many hours of public testimony about the election — some of it from well-known election conspiracy theorists in the Washoe community.
However, in a statement to CBS News, Andriola said she was asked to reconsider her vote on certification at a July 16 meeting of the board of commissioners, before the vote became final under commission rules. She did not comment on the motivations for her initial refusal to certify the results of her own election.
Washoe County is a crucial county in Nevada, which polls show could become a key swing state in the 2024 presidential electionIt has also been a hotbed of election denialism – a movement funded by a charismatic local Trump supporter.
This week’s vote represents the latest sign that local officials may be persuaded by deniers to delay or withhold certification of election results, even when election officials find that the election was conducted without fraud or malfeasance.
“The failure to collect accurate election results as required by law could set a dangerous precedent for Nevada elections,” Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said in a statement on X. “It is unacceptable for any public official to undermine confidence in our democracy.”
The Nevada Secretary of State’s Office and state Attorney General Aaron Ford filed a petition with the Nevada Supreme Court on Wednesday asking the court to uphold the commissioners’ legal obligation to certify election results, a spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office said.
Vote certification is an administrative process by which local officials are legally required to confirm the results of an election. There are very few cases where officials are required not to certify the result, usually only when a vote is successfully challenged in court, which is not the case in Washoe’s case. Certification does not necessarily mean that there was no error in the process, and in some states it is required before a lawsuit can be filed to challenge the results.
But such episodes, in which local officials block the tedious administrative task of certifying the result, are emerging as a strategy among election deniers in key presidential states across the country. Election experts worry that any attempt to block the certification of the vote at the local level could portend problems for the presidential election in November, when states must meet strict deadlines to certify the result.
“Efforts to delay or derail certification could lead to chaos and potentially political violence,” said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research.
“Such efforts to derail democracy are exactly what our opponents who oppose democracy want. And it appears that those who oppose American democracy are preparing to use this tactic in November, if their preferred candidate loses,” Becker added.
Washoe officials aren’t alone in refusing to certify election results. Recently, local officials in key states like Michigan and Georgia have chosen not to certify elections, citing concerns about the integrity of the electoral process and often facing expressions of suspicion about the vote during public comment.
In May, canvassers in Delta County, Michigan, refused to certify a recall election after a pressure campaign by local election conspiracy activists. Officials eventually certified the race after the Michigan State Board of Elections sent a letter saying canvassers would face legal consequences if they failed to comply with their certification mandate.
Also in May, Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County Board of Elections in Georgia, refused to certify the presidential primary election, citing a desire to verify voter data tied to voter rolls. She said the lack of access to primary voter data meant she was “unable to fulfill her oath of office,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Adams, who was appointed to the board in February, is a regional coordinator for the Election Integrity Network, a powerful national network of right-wing election conspiracy activists led by former Trump legal adviser Cleta Mitchell, who worked on a number of unsuccessful lawsuits seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election and was on the phone after the election in which Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” him the votes he needed to win. EIN Affiliated Groups seek to undermine voting and ballot counting through aggressive election monitoring and a nationwide purge of voter rolls that is likely to primarily affect minority and young voters who tend to vote Democratic.
Back in Washoe, the decision not to certify came as a surprise to Democratic Commissioner and Chairman Alexis Hill.
“I’m a little shocked and sad,” Hill said shortly after the vote. “It’s not good for our republic, for our democracy.”
“The results of the recount show how incredibly effective our registrar is, despite all the pressure it is under,” she said.
