Compared with most other states, Pennsylvania gives county commissioners more discretion when it comes to the details of the voting process — how to deal with different methods of writing the date on mail-in ballot envelopes, whether to let mail-in voters know about errors and whether those errors can be fixed. But courts have consistently rejected the notion that county officials can pick which ballots and elections to certify. In Pennsylvania, attempts in 2022 by four counties to exclude some mail-in ballots from their certified totals were denied by state courts.
Refusals and delays on certification at the county level are on the rise. In Waynesboro, Va., two Republican members of the elections board have pledged not to certify the results, claiming that voting machines violate the state’s Constitution. Last week, a Georgia judge ruled against supporters of Mr. Trump who argued that county officials have the right not to certify results. “If election superintendents were, as Plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury and judge and so — because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud — refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced,” Judge Robert C.I. McBurney wrote.
The pushback from the courts hasn’t stopped some county officials from trying to cast doubt on the election, in some cases weeks before it even began. One member of the Board of County Canvassers in Kalamazoo County, Mich., reportedly said he would refuse to certify the 2024 election should it unfold like 2020. (He backed down after the A.C.L.U. filed a lawsuit.)
Experts say that while it’s likely that there will be more county-level refusals to certify election results in 2024, the courts remain a backstop. “In some respects, this is election denial theater, to try to create controversy and the impression of something improper happening,” said Wendy Weiser, who directs the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive think tank at the New York University School of Law. “The good news is that there are many legal processes and guardrails in place to make sure that certification happens.”