Before November, election officials prepared for the possibility that Republicans who embraced former President Donald Trump’s lies about voter fraud would challenge the verdict of voters by refusing to certify the results.
Three weeks after the end of voting, such challenges are playing out in just two states, Arizona and Pennsylvania, where Democrats won the marquee races for governor and U.S. Senate.
Legal experts predict the bids are doomed because local governmental bodies typically don’t have the option to vote against certifying the results of their elections. It also reflects the limited ability of election conspiracy theorists to disrupt the midterms. One rural Arizona county has drawn court challenges after its refusal to certify, but another flirting with blocking certification backed off amid legal threats.
In Pennsylvania, a handful of the state’s 67 counties have delayed certification because of recounts demanded by local conspiracy theorists in scattered precincts. But in most states, certification has gone smoothly.
“Before Election Day, I thought Republicans would exploit the certification process to undermine election results,” said Marc Elias, a Democratic attorney who has sued to compel the lone Arizona county to certify.
That there’s only one county delaying so far in that important battleground state, where Republican candidates who denied Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential race ran unsuccessfully for governor and secretary of state, is “good news, and a bit of a surprise,” Elias said.
The outcome is a reflection of the diminished opportunities election conspiracy theorists have to control elections after a number of their candidates were routed in statewide elections for positions overseeing voting. They’re largely left with a growing footprint in conservative, rural counties. Still, that’s enough to cause headaches for having the election results certified on a statewide basis, raising concerns about how rural counties might respond after the next presidential election.
“It is one of the few places where election deniers have a lever of power,” Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said of the local political bodies charged with certifying election results in most states. “It’s a good test run for 2024, showing state courts they’re going to have to step in.”