Concern is raised in swing states by election officials who support Trump’s “Big Lie”

The Republican leader of the Macomb County, Michigan, board that certifies the results of the November election urged former US President Donald Trump to fight for his political reelection in 2020.

A Republican member of the Henderson County election board in North Carolina sent lawmakers an email in August alleging—without providing any supporting documentation—that Democrats were inundating the state with illegitimate votes.

Furthermore, Republican authorities in six counties in Pennsylvania, a state that is seen as crucial for both Trump and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, have voted against certifying the results since 2020.

Many Republican members of local election boards who certify results have come to believe Trump’s phony conspiracy theories about voting fraud, four years after he attempted to reverse his election loss. Their ascent increases the likelihood that, should Trump lose, pro-Trump officials in a number of states may be able to postpone or cast doubt on the results of the presidential election on November 5.

In each of the seven battleground states where the result of the election is expected to be decided, Reuters looked at the election boards in the five largest counties. It was discovered that nearly half, or 16 of the 35 county election boards, had at least one member who had voiced skepticism toward the electoral process in favor of Trump. These views included theories regarding Trump’s victory in the 2020 election, concerns about the reliability of voting machines, and convictions regarding widespread mail-in ballot fraud.

The tallies provided by Reuters are based on an analysis of news accounts, social media platforms, and public records in addition to conversations with election authorities.

37 election doubters in all, including 20 who had previously voted to not certify results, were identified by Reuters as being on the election boards of the five most populous counties in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. There are also a lot of smaller county boards with election deniers in those states. The only swing state where there didn’t seem to be any of these doubters on large county election boards was Wisconsin.

According to state officials, there is minimal possibility that local boards may permanently prevent certification. A more plausible scenario is that state-level delays would eventually cause states to miss the federally mandated deadline of December 11th for submitting election results to Washington. Democrats, election officials in battleground states, and voting-rights experts at legal nonprofits think it might present a chance for Trump and his Republican allies in Congress to attempt to reverse the results if he loses.

Nikhel Sus, deputy chief counsel at the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said, “By sowing doubts at the county level about whether an election should be certified, they are laying the groundwork to argue that if President Trump loses in a particular state, that the electoral slates from that state should not be counted.”

According to Trump’s team, the former president was preoccupied with defending “legal votes.” RNC and Trump campaign spokesperson Claire Zunk stated in a statement that “President Trump’s election integrity effort is dedicated to protecting every legal vote, mitigating threats to the voting process, and securing the election.” When asked if his campaign was setting up to challenge a possible loss, Zunk chose not to answer immediately.

It is now more difficult, but not impossible, for partisan lawmakers to rig the election thanks to new safeguards.

The brutal attack on the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021, by Trump’s supporters was the result of his attempts to reverse his defeat in 2020. The protestors made an effort to prevent Joe Biden’s victory from being certified. Trump has not committed to recognizing the results this year and will not acknowledge that he lost in 2020.

Congress tightened the certification process in 2022 in an effort to prevent a repeat of the past. A challenge to a state’s results, among other things, needed the consent of one-fifth of the Senate and the House of Representatives in the United States. For a challenge in 2020 and prior years, only one member of each chamber was required. Rejecting a state’s electoral votes requires, as before, a majority in both.

Ultimately, though, whether the victor becomes president will rely on the new Congress’s capacity to resist temptation to invalidate state results after it takes office on January 3. Republicans may have the votes to overturn some state outcomes and give Trump the presidency if they take control of both chambers.

Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson “intends to follow the Constitution” in this year’s election, his spokesperson stated without providing further details. Johnson refused to acknowledge that Trump was defeated four years ago, joining other Republicans in contesting the 2020 election results.

Election-law experts express hope that Congress will follow conventions and reject attempts to reverse the results, as it did in 2020, regardless of the winning party. However, they worry that erroneous accusations of fraud and disagreements over the outcomes can lead to widespread unrest.

The founder of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonprofit that collaborates with election authorities from both parties, David Becker, predicted that there would be turmoil and confusion throughout the period, which grifters would use to raise money and encourage violence.

Since Trump’s ill-prepared legal effort to invalidate Biden’s victory, a lot has changed. Trump has eliminated almost all opposition from his party. There are now Trump supporters running the Republican National Committee, including a daughter-in-law. It claims to have enlisted 200,000 poll observers and workers to keep an eye on and thwart what Trump asserts—without providing any proof—will be a Democratic attempt to steal votes.

The fact that there are many election skeptics in positions of power over the vote, according to Lindsey Miller of Informing Democracy, a nonprofit that studies threats, opens new tab to election certification, shows how deeply the “Big Lie” that Trump was stolen from the contest in 2020 has entered the party.

Trump loyalists on the State Election Board this year established new rules that may allow certification delays so that local election officials could look into fraud in Georgia, a focus of Trump’s efforts to sabotage the 2020 outcome. Democrats are suing to overturn the regulations. Democrats have filed a lawsuit to overturn the board’s decision to require a hand count of every ballot, which was announced last month.

Republican chief operations officer for Georgia’s secretary of state’s office, Gabe Sterling, told Reuters he doesn’t think local officials can prevent the state’s results from being certified. “My big concern is they are going to create smoke around things,” Sterling stated.

Critics view the RNC’s legal onslaught as a prelude to challenging a Trump loss, as it has already filed more than 100 lawsuits against municipal and state authorities challenging various aspects of the voting process.

“Every attack on voter access from the Trump campaign and their election-denying allies at the RNC,” according to DNC spokesperson Alex Floyd, is being met with resistance from the Harris campaign and the Democratic National Committee. He withheld information regarding the legal counsel and tactics of his party.

Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state of Arizona, says his office is prepared for everything, even attempts to stall certification. In an interview, Fontes declared, “We’ll use any legal means necessary,” even going to court. “The election deniers don’t give a damn about the law.”

Internal election dobbers in the system

Local governments, typically counties, oversee the voting process and tabulate the results in the US electoral system. The first step in a process that finally sees the U.S. Congress declare presidential elections official in January is the verification and certification of results by local boards.

These boards are designed to perform normal tasks and provide automatic certification. However, after 2020, that was different. Following the spread of conspiracy theories involving tampered voting equipment and forged ballots, officials who favor Trump have attempted to postpone or prevent certification in a number of states.

Every time, state officials used court orders or fear of criminal charges to quickly force the locals to change their ways. Six senior state election officials told Reuters they were optimistic they could pull it off again this year, but they were concerned about a potential upheaval in the event that several counties refused to certify.

Another hotly disputed state, North Carolina, has seen its share of certification disputes.

After attempting to postpone certification, two Republican election board members in Surry County—which leans largely Republican—were fired by the state elections board in a public vote held in March 2023. According to emails obtained by Reuters through a public records request, Jimmy Yokeley, one of the replacements, has urged the majority-Democratic five-member board to verify citizenship more thoroughly and voiced concerns about noncitizens casting votes. Yokeley was contacted for comment but did not reply.

In federal elections, it is already unlawful for noncitizens to vote, and there is no proof that this happens frequently. Republicans have nonetheless elevated the matter to a major debating theme. Trump has made it more prominent by reiterating the baseless assertion that Democrats favor open borders in order to register undocumented immigrants as voters.

Republican election board member Linda Rebuck of Henderson County, North Carolina, warned Republican lawmakers via email in August that “we are going to lose NC to the Dems in November which will likely mean we lose the country” if fresh steps were not taken to counteract phony voters.

In response, Rebuck received criticism from Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the state Board of Elections, for disseminating “false and misleading statements, and partisan remarks.” Requests for comment from Rebuck were not answered.

Brinson Bell stated in an interview that she anticipates activists contesting the outcomes. That is our goal in getting ready for. November 5 is not the end of it. We have a long way to go,” she remarked.

Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit to compel certification by three counties in the midterm elections in 2022. They had refused to include in their certified results for the primary nominating contest that May mail-in ballots that did not have a handwritten date.

After a two-month wait, the counties, which contain majorities of Republican voters—Berks, Lancaster, and Fayette—finally confirmed the results. In 2022, an election board in Luzerne County, whose voters are evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, first deadlocked before voting to certify in response to a lawsuit and media attention.

Al Schmidt, the secretary of state for Pennsylvania, threatened to sue any of the 67 counties in his state if they failed to timely certify the results. At a symposium on election system threats held in Michigan last month, he stated, “We’re confident that the courts would expeditiously require those counties to certify their elections, because of how clear the election law is in Pennsylvania.”

TENSIONS IN THE FIGHT ARENA

Republicans who have publicly questioned the integrity of the electoral process are seated on the canvassing boards of several of the biggest counties in Michigan, a battleground state. In 2020, Nancy Tiseo, the chair of the board of canvassers, urged Trump to establish “military tribunals” to look into election fraud in Macomb, the third-biggest county. When asked for a comment, she remained silent.

This summer, a state law was passed that makes it clear that canvassers’ responsibility is to verify the vote totals, not to stall certification due to possible fraud. A Michigan county board must forward all election records to the state canvassing board, which will confirm the results within 20 days following the vote, if the board refuses to be certified.

Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic Secretary of State for Michigan, expressed her concern that certain members of the canvass board would decide not to certify the results, obstructing the process and feeding the myth that there was election fraud. In an interview, she stated, “We are more aware of the challenges we face and the opportunities that lie ahead.”

A five-foot wooden Trump sign, placed by Luke Deming, vice chair of the Huron County Republican Party and husband of Huron canvassing board member Kellie Deming, greets visitors to the community of Bad Axe in Huron County, Michigan.

This year, Kellie Deming chose not to cast a ballot to validate the results in her county, which supported Trump by a margin of 39 points in 2020. Even though the other three board members agreed to certify, she told Reuters that she didn’t think she could trust the results that the local election clerks had presented. She said she wasn’t sure if she would approve the results from this November.

She said that Biden isn’t actually president when asked about the 2020 election. She said, “President Trump is still president,” and hung up without providing any further context. When questioned further, she remained silent.

Huron board member Evelyn Conkright, a Democrat, said, “It’s a distrust that we never had before.” “We’re all tense.”