Local election officials in key swing states are taking on new power heading into 2024, worrying some legal observers who expect attempts to slow down the certification process in favor of GOP candidates.
In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, which former President Trump baselessly claimed was rigged against him, local bodies, which typically provide clerical roles, are now giving glimpses into what potential chaos might loom in 2024.
In Georgia, recent last-minute rule changes by the State Election board – an unelected panel of three Republicans, one Democrat and a nonpartisan chair — have raised alarm among citizens and election officials that the battleground state’s election results could be easily thrown into disarray.
Michigan and Nevada have also seen their share of attempts to decline certifying certain results. Meanwhile, in Arizona, a local county supervisor is suing to have ballots be counted by hand instead of machines.
“Going into this election, we see election deniers who are more organized than they were before, who have been through this once before, and may have learned something or two from all of their defeats in the 2020 election. And we also see more intensity,” said Uzoma Nkwonta, a partner at Elias Law Group, a firm that Vice President Harris’s campaign has brought on to assist with election litigation.
In Georgia, the state board recently began requiring local boards to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results, which critics warn could cause delays.
On Monday, the board decided 3-2 that investigations must also be ordered if local election board members locate discrepancies at a precinct. It’s left to the board to determine how to “compute the votes justly” if they identify an error beyond correction.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who has spoken out against the board’s actions as an “11th-hour effort to impose new activist rulemaking,” said earlier this month that refusing to certify election results is unlawful and that counties must certify results by Nov. 12.
“We fully anticipate that counties will follow the law,” Raffensperger wrote on X.
Trump, on the other hand, has praised the board’s three Republicans as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.”
Some 850 people attended a virtual meeting Monday where the State Election Board invited public comment on the proposals. Election workers, voters and the Democratic Party of Georgia pushed back against the new rules as excessive and too last-minute. Administrators of the meeting were frequently forced to mute the microphones of angry detractors attempting to interject.
“This board has wasted time and taxpayer money to reopen issues that have already been settled,” said Allison Prendergast, who identified herself as a Gwinnett County, Ga. voter. “That’s a misuse of power.”
Kathy Boockvar, former secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (D), said in an interview that the wide range of election officials raising concern about the changes is a red flag the Georgia panel shouldn’t ignore.
“Here we’ve got a situation where both the chief state election official and local county election officials all agree this is a bad idea, which, to me, is full stop – then, this is a bad idea,” Boockvar said.
With just under 75 days until Election Day, the changes introduce new variables to an election that officials have likely been planning for nearly two years under regular threats. It’s bound to be “disruptive and challenging,” said former Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman (R).
“It’s just one more example of…a new rule that’s going to impact the administration of elections without any funding or resources to pull it off,” Wyman said.
High-profile conservative activists joined the meeting to express support for the proposed rules, including Harry MacDougald – a lawyer for Jeffrey Clark, the ex-Justice Department official charged alongside Trump in his Georgia election subversion case – and the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, who authored Project 2025’s federal election oversight section.
“You need to ignore all these partisan allegations you’ve heard,” said von Spakovsky, who spoke in a personal capacity. “This is a matter of good government, not politics, and those who say, ‘This will disenfranchise voters’ – that’s just not true.”
The former secretaries of state, Boockvar and Wyman, warned that the flurry of changes could cause delays that bump up on deadlines prescribed in the Constitution.
“If they’re delaying the certification of the presidential election, they’re delaying the certification of the entire election,” Wyman said. “And so, what impact does that have? Does Georgia not have a congressional delegation on the floor of the House when they’re supposed to certify the results, and does that happen in other states? What disruption does that cause?”
The battle over election certifications has already played out in key swing states the last few elections.
In Arizona, GOP board members in two ruby-red Arizona counties — Mohave and Cochise — sought to delay certifying their 2022 vote canvasses until courts and state officials commanded they do so. Mohave County Supervisor Ron Gould (R) at the time said he was only voting to certify “under duress.”
As this year’s election approaches, Gould has led a quest for his county to count ballots by hand instead of using machines. After Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) sent a letter saying it was illegal, Gould’s board rejected the idea in a 3-2 vote.
Gould has since sued so his county can order a full hand count, also calling Mayes’s letter “threats and intimidation” and accusing her of abusing her office.
“Hand counting ballots will take much longer and require more staff time than using the machine counts, as the law permits,” said Nkwonta, the Elias Law partner.
In Michigan, officials in Delta County, a rural area in the Upper Peninsula, delayed certification of a recall election ousting three incumbent Republicans. The county ultimately certified the results after initially deadlocking 2-2 in May.
And in Nevada, three Republicans on Washoe County Board last month declined to certify two primary recounts. Commissioner Clara Andriol, one of those Republicans, voted against certifying her own victory.
The board ultimately relented only after Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar (D) went to the state’s highest court, which ultimately dismissed the case as moot on Monday.
Its order, however, acknowledged that the issue is “perhaps capable of repetition.”
