There is growing national concern about the risk of election deniers persuading local officials to refuse certification of legitimate voting outcomes after a bizarre situation unfolded in Nevada, where a county board commissioner denied certification to her own victory.
Washoe County Board Commissioner Clara Andriola won her primary in June by nearly 19 points over her main challenger, Mark Lawson. Lawson requested a recount, which showed the initial tally in the race was valid.
And yet, at Tuesday's commission meeting, Andriola sided with two other Republican commissioners in agreeing to not certify the results of her own election.
She said there was "a lot of information that has been shared that warrants a further investigation," and she needed to vote her "conscience" and wanted to restore public trust after hearing many hours of public testimony about the election — some of which came from well-known election conspiracy theorists in the Washoe community.
However, in a statement to CBS News, Andriola said she's asked to revisit her vote on the certification at a Board of Commissioners meeting on July 16, before the vote becomes final under commission rules. She offered no comment on the motivation for her initial refusal to certify the results of her own election.
Washoe County is a crucial battleground county in Nevada, which polling suggests could emerge as a battleground state in the 2024 presidential contest. It has also been a hotbed of election denialism — a movement bankrolled by a charismatic local Trump supporter.
The vote this week represented the latest sign that local officials could be persuaded by election deniers to delay or withhold certification of election results, even when election officials find that the election was free of fraud or malfeasance.
"The refusal to canvass accurate election results, required by law, has the potential to set a dangerous precedent for elections in Nevada," said Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar in a statement on X. "It is unacceptable that any public officer would undermine confidence in our democracy."
The Nevada secretary of state's office and state Attorney General Aaron Ford filed a petition with the Nevada Supreme Court Wednesday asking the court to confirm the commissioners' legal obligation to certify election results, a spokesperson from the secretary of state's office said.
Certification of the vote is an administrative process whereby local officials are legally obligated to confirm the results of the election. There are very few instances where officials are under an obligation not to certify — typically, only when there is a successful court challenge to a vote, which is not the case in the Washoe contest. Certification doesn't inherently mean there were no errors in the process, and in some states, it's required before lawsuits can be filed to contest the results.
But this kind of episode — which saw local officials blocking the mundane administrative task of certifying the result — is emerging as a strategy among election deniers in pivotal presidential states around the country. Elections experts are concerned that each effort to block certification of the vote at a local level could foreshadow trouble for November's presidential election, where there are strict deadlines for states to certify.
"Efforts to delay or derail certification could result in chaos and potentially political violence," said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research.
"Such efforts to derail democracy are exactly what our adversaries who oppose democracy desire. And it appears those that oppose American democracy are preparing to use this tactic in November, if their preferred candidate loses," Becker added.
Washoe officials are not alone in refusing to certify races. Recently, local officials in battleground states like Michigan and Georgia have chosen not to certify elections, citing concerns with the integrity of the elections process and often facing vocal outpourings of suspicion about voting during public comment.
In May, canvassers in Delta County, Michigan, refused to certify a recall election after a pressure campaign by local election conspiracy activists. The officials eventually certified the race after Michigan's State Board Of Elections sent the board a letter stating the canvassers would face legal consequences for not following their mandate to certify.
Also in May, a Republican member of the Fulton County Elections Board in Georgia, Julie Adams, refused to certify the presidential primary election, citing a desire to review elections data related to voter rolls. She said that lack of access to the election data from the primary meant she was "unable to fulfill her oath of office," according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Adams, who was appointed to the board in February, is a regional coordinator for the Election Integrity Network, a powerful national network of right-wing election conspiracy activists led by former Trump legal adviser Cleta Mitchell, who worked on a number of failed lawsuits to overturn the 2020 presidential election and was on the post-election phone during which Trump asked Raffensperger to "find" him the votes necessary for him to win. EIN-affiliated groups seek to undermine voting and ballot counting with aggressive election monitoring and a nationwide purge of the voter rolls likely to affect mostly minority and young voters who tend to vote for Democrats.
Back in Washoe, the decision not to certify came as a surprise to Democratic Commissioner and Chair Alexis Hill.
"I am kind of shocked and sad," said Hill shortly after the vote. "It's not good for our republic, for our democracy."
"The results of the recount show how incredibly effective our registrar's office is, with all the pressure they are under," she said.
Madeleine May is an investigative producer at CBS News based in Washington, D.C. She previously covered politics for VICE News and reported on organized crime and corruption for OCCRP. She covers threats to democracy, disinformation, political violence, and extremism.
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