Fact: State certification laws require officials to sign off on results that election workers have carefully counted and double-checked through strict, predetermined procedures.
Each state has preset procedures and timelines for how election officials count ballots and finalize results after the polls close. After a series of checks that confirm the accuracy of the results, officials sign off on them in a final step called “certification.” Certification is a legally required duty. The certification process is typically narrow in scope; if a candidate alleges fraud, state laws lay out legal channels to address these questions. Officials typically review the unofficial results or certify results at meetings open to the public, and many states assign these responsibilities to joint teams of Republicans and Democrats.
In the rare instance where officials do not complete this legally required duty, every state has a legal route available to enforce compliance. When necessary, courts have stepped in to address the issue.
Rumor: Officials can refuse to certify election results if they don’t agree with them.
Seizing on false — repeatedly debunked — allegations of fraud, conspiracy theorists have pressured election officials not to certify results and occasionally convinced officials to shirk their mandatory duty. While courts and state officials have successfully intervened each time, rumors persist that individual officials can tamper with the certification process.
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We worked with Swayable, a research software platform that measures how effectively media content changes opinions, to determine what messages helped voters best understand the facts.
Suggested counter-messages based on our testing:
- Election certification is the method by which state and local election officials confirm that election results are accurate and complete. Once election officials perform a series of checks to ensure results are accurate, they are required by law to certify the results.
- Election certification is the method by which state and local election officials confirm that election results are accurate and complete. Election officials follow pre-existing rules when certifying results so no one can interfere with the results.
The message above was found to be most effective in communicating the facts, though differences exist by region and demographic group. See Swayable’s dashboard to examine more detailed results, including other messages tested.
