- Oct 17, 2011
- 43,726
- 46,791
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Atheist
- Marital Status
- Legal Union (Other)
I've seen the threads of this coming together. This article pulls a lot of it together in one place.
When a member of Georgia’s Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections refused to join her colleagues as they certified two primaries this year, she claimed she had been denied her right to examine a long list of election records for signs of fraud or other issues.
Now the board member, Julie Adams, an avowed believer in the false theory that the 2020 election was stolen from former president Donald Trump, is suing the board, hoping a judge will affirm that right and potentially empower others in similar positions elsewhere to hold up the outcome of elections.
CF thread:
The Democratic National Committee and the state Democratic Party have asked to intervene in the suit, claiming Adams’s actions are part of a coordinated effort by Trump, his allies and the GOP to sow the same kind of doubt in this year’s presidential election that led to the violent attempt on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn Biden’s first victory.
“They are playing poker with the cards up,” said Tolulope Kevin Olasanoye, executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia. “They are telling us exactly what they are going to do. We would be foolish if we sat on our hands and did nothing and watched this happen.”
Trump has stated plainly that the only way he can lose this fall is if Democrats cheat. His campaign and the Republican National Committee are spending historic sums building “election integrity” operations in key battleground states, preparing to challenge results in court, and recruiting large armies of grass-roots supporters to monitor voting locations and counting facilities and to serve as poll workers.
Certification of local results is a key target in this effort, a once-mundane administrative step that has become a flash point in the debate over election security — and a potential opportunity to subvert the will of voters. Election officials in the nation’s 3,000-plus counties must sign off on results, followed by a similar process at the state level. Typically, certification does not mean there were no errors — it simply reflects the votes tallied at that point. And it does not preclude lawsuits contesting those results; in fact, in some states lawsuits cannot be filed until after certification is complete.
[This is an administrative step, not an audit.]
Delaying certification at any step could hold up or halt the process [that funnels into electoral votes], potentially preventing the rightful winner from taking office.
Since 2020, county-level election officials in five key battleground states — Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania — have tried to block the certification of vote tallies in both primaries and general elections. So far, none of the efforts have succeeded.
But the chaos and confusion that could result from such an effort are themselves a deep concern among voting rights advocates, who believe that unsubstantiated claims of fraud by Trump and his allies are sowing even deeper mistrust in the fall election results than they did four years ago, raising the potential for unrest and even violence on a greater scale too.
In 2022, two commissioners from rural Cochise County in Arizona refused to certify midterm election results.
CF thread:
U.S. presidential elections operate on a tight schedule, with most states requiring county- and state-level certification within days of Election Day. Federal law in turn requires governors to declare which candidate’s electors will cast electoral college votes at least six days before Dec. 17, when they are scheduled to meet. If they fail to meet and cast votes that day, a state’s electoral votes probably would not be counted during the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, the final step in determining the presidential outcome.
[Since Jan 6, a law was passed making it more difficult for Congresscritters to challenge states' electoral slates at the Veep counting. But if the slates never arrive, due to refusals to certify and inevitable lawsuits, they can't be counted.]
[Such a move could swing the result, or might] deprive both candidates of the 270 electoral votes required under federal law to win [in which case each state gets one House vote, and Republicans control 28 of 50 states.]
“I worry a lot about the disinformation that, no matter how this plays out, is going to be rampant,” [Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania’s secretary of state during the 2020 election] said. “It’s so much easier to spread disinformation than it is to explain all the ways that the incorrect information is wrong. Combined with this very angry, stressed environment that we’re living in right now, it’s such a fraught time to be having a major election in.”
Trump allies test a new strategy for blocking election results
In five battleground states, county-level officials have tried to block the certification of vote tallies — which election experts worry is a test run for trying to thwart a Biden victory.When a member of Georgia’s Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections refused to join her colleagues as they certified two primaries this year, she claimed she had been denied her right to examine a long list of election records for signs of fraud or other issues.
Now the board member, Julie Adams, an avowed believer in the false theory that the 2020 election was stolen from former president Donald Trump, is suing the board, hoping a judge will affirm that right and potentially empower others in similar positions elsewhere to hold up the outcome of elections.
CF thread:
Tea Party Patriot elections board member refuses to certify Georgia primary results (others certify results over her abstention)
The Democratic National Committee and the state Democratic Party have asked to intervene in the suit, claiming Adams’s actions are part of a coordinated effort by Trump, his allies and the GOP to sow the same kind of doubt in this year’s presidential election that led to the violent attempt on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn Biden’s first victory.
“They are playing poker with the cards up,” said Tolulope Kevin Olasanoye, executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia. “They are telling us exactly what they are going to do. We would be foolish if we sat on our hands and did nothing and watched this happen.”
Trump has stated plainly that the only way he can lose this fall is if Democrats cheat. His campaign and the Republican National Committee are spending historic sums building “election integrity” operations in key battleground states, preparing to challenge results in court, and recruiting large armies of grass-roots supporters to monitor voting locations and counting facilities and to serve as poll workers.
Certification of local results is a key target in this effort, a once-mundane administrative step that has become a flash point in the debate over election security — and a potential opportunity to subvert the will of voters. Election officials in the nation’s 3,000-plus counties must sign off on results, followed by a similar process at the state level. Typically, certification does not mean there were no errors — it simply reflects the votes tallied at that point. And it does not preclude lawsuits contesting those results; in fact, in some states lawsuits cannot be filed until after certification is complete.
[This is an administrative step, not an audit.]
Delaying certification at any step could hold up or halt the process [that funnels into electoral votes], potentially preventing the rightful winner from taking office.
Since 2020, county-level election officials in five key battleground states — Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania — have tried to block the certification of vote tallies in both primaries and general elections. So far, none of the efforts have succeeded.
But the chaos and confusion that could result from such an effort are themselves a deep concern among voting rights advocates, who believe that unsubstantiated claims of fraud by Trump and his allies are sowing even deeper mistrust in the fall election results than they did four years ago, raising the potential for unrest and even violence on a greater scale too.
In 2022, two commissioners from rural Cochise County in Arizona refused to certify midterm election results.
CF thread:
Refuse to Certify
The same year, local election boards in three Pennsylvania counties withheld thousands of votes from certified totals. Last month in Michigan’s Delta County, the Board of Canvassers voted not to certify local results. A similar attempt to not certify May election results occurred in Nevada in Washoe County, home to Reno. In all four states, officials cited mistrust in election machines or ballot errors but offered no evidence of widespread fraud. In all four, certification proceeded after state intervention.U.S. presidential elections operate on a tight schedule, with most states requiring county- and state-level certification within days of Election Day. Federal law in turn requires governors to declare which candidate’s electors will cast electoral college votes at least six days before Dec. 17, when they are scheduled to meet. If they fail to meet and cast votes that day, a state’s electoral votes probably would not be counted during the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, the final step in determining the presidential outcome.
[Since Jan 6, a law was passed making it more difficult for Congresscritters to challenge states' electoral slates at the Veep counting. But if the slates never arrive, due to refusals to certify and inevitable lawsuits, they can't be counted.]
[Such a move could swing the result, or might] deprive both candidates of the 270 electoral votes required under federal law to win [in which case each state gets one House vote, and Republicans control 28 of 50 states.]
“I worry a lot about the disinformation that, no matter how this plays out, is going to be rampant,” [Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania’s secretary of state during the 2020 election] said. “It’s so much easier to spread disinformation than it is to explain all the ways that the incorrect information is wrong. Combined with this very angry, stressed environment that we’re living in right now, it’s such a fraught time to be having a major election in.”
