After votes are tabulated locally, state election laws designate an individual or board to confirm the totals add up and to certify victory for the winning candidate. A new Election Reformers Network (ERN) analysis finds that in most states, political parties play a major role in selecting the people responsible for certification. That role is now creating a significant risk of subversion.
At the state level, 39 states give partisan-controlled boards or partisan officials exclusive control over certification, and every state except for Hawaii involves party-nominated or partisan-elected or -appointed figures in some manner in the process. By contrast, a parallel ERN study finds that almost all of our peer democracies limit the role of political parties to observing the process and bringing challenges in court. The finalization of results in these democracies is handled by the same (usually nonpartisan) professionals who run the election itself.
Already, we’re seeing efforts by U.S. partisans to exploit certification. In 2020, Republican party representatives in Wayne County, the largest in Michigan, refused for several hours to certify results of the presidential election, briefly throwing the contest in a key swing state into turmoil. One of their counterparts at the state level board — the same panel that last week drew charges of political bias when it rejected, on party lines, a proposed ballot measure to protect reproductive rights — threatened to do likewise. A similar skirmish arose in New Mexico earlier this year. And in Pennsylvania, three county electoral boards for months refused to certify primary results that include ballots they argued should be rejected, despite court rulings to the contrary.