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A classic 19-century Thomas Nast cartoon of New York’s William “Boss” Tweed shows him leaning on a ballot box with the quote, “As long as I count the Votes, what are you going to do about it? say?” Joseph Stalin, for his part, once said, “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”
Crooked counting of votes is a hallmark of a failed democracy. One of the things our country has gotten right over its centuries of development is vote counting. In the 20th century, the counting of the votes became a noncontroversial part of elections. There is no national election, and not even 50 state-run elections, but hundreds of elections run by counties. There are layers upon layers of protections to ensure that elections are clean — free, fair, and without fraud. It all depends on trust and impartial election officials doing their jobs.
One of those steps is among the least controversial: having the results certified. It is, to use a technical term, “ministerial.” No judgment is supposed to be involved. Two plus two equals four.
But since 2020, in their frenzy to undo the voters’ will, election deniers have tried to upend that process. That year, Donald Trump lobbied Detroit County board members to get them to reject the votes of their own constituents. In 2022, officials in Cochise County, Arizona, broke from tradition and voted against certifying the election results based on some vague worries about voting machines. A judge eventually ordered them to certify, putting an end to their little rebellion.
This year, around the country, rogue local election officials are increasingly threatening to withhold certification of results, based on no evidence of impropriety whatsoever, cheered on by hordes of online election deniers.
The statewide Georgia election board has a new majority of ardent Donald Trump supporters. He hailed them as “pit bulls” at a rally. State officials ordered country boards to refrain from certifying unless they undertake investigations. Most recently, they ordered local officials to count the number of ballots by hand. Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger warned, “What they’re talking about is breaking open the ballot boxes.”
Can officials really withhold certification? The Brennan Center recently published a pair of resources thoroughly answering this question. The first is a series of state-by-state guides laying out the legal protections for election certification in each battleground state and the process to ensure that officials carry out that duty. The law is clear: Certification is not a discretionary act. Election officials are legally obligated to do it.
In the second, my colleague Derek Tisler lays out in detail the checks, double checks, and triple checks that all occur well before election certification. That’s why certification is obligatory. If there are doubts about the accuracy of the count or the validity of ballots, there is ample opportunity to raise those flags before election certification. Refusing to certify is an act of partisan petulance — the last tantrum of sore losers — not the heroic stand of a conscientious objector.
