Election Certification

When the commissioners of Washoe County, Nevada, met in July 2024 to certify the results of several primary election recounts, their sign-off should have been perfunctory. Instead, a volatile mix of election denialism, confusion, and faulty legal advice led the commission to vote 3–2 against certifying the results — an unprecedented scenario in the state’s 160-year history, even in Nevada’s “swingiest” county. In a bizarre turn of events, one of the refusing commissioners even voted against certifying her own victory. ¹

Certification — the statutory step that marks the end of the vote-counting process — has historically served as a mandatory and uneventful formality after the excitement of an election winds down. In the weeks after Election Day, local officials (typically a local election board or canvassing board) complete a series of checks to make sure that all votes are counted, resolve any discrepancies in the vote totals, and verify that the results are accurate — a process known as the canvass. Once the canvass has concluded, they must formally “certify,” or sign off on, the completion of that process by a specific date set by state law. They then deliver the results to state officials, who conduct their own canvass and certify the results for statewide elections. ² Certification is thus procedurally important but substantively narrow: It confirms that all the necessary steps in the postelection process have taken place.

For more than a century, state courts around the country have affirmed that once vote totals are final, certification is not optional. ³ It is not the time to investigate the results or weigh in on legal issues. Instead, state laws create clear processes to ensure that any challenges to an election are resolved impartially and with procedural safeguards in place to protect the vote. ⁴ But in Washoe County, a multiyear movement to upend that status quo created a perfect storm.

In 2020, Washoe County’s longest-serving commissioner, Jeanne Herman, became one of the first officials in the election denial movement to vote against certification, rejecting the results of President Joe Biden’s win because, she claimed, “the election was improper.” ⁵ At the time, the four other commissioners outvoted Herman. Undeterred, she later voted against certifying both the 2022 primary and general elections. ⁶

In 2022, a second member who had expressed doubts about the 2020 presidential election, Mark Clark, was elected to the commission. ⁷ Clark’s candidacy was financed by a growing movement of election deniers, including local millionaire Robert Beadles. ⁸ Together, Herman and Clark voted against certifying the county’s 2024 primary results on the basis of ballot printing errors — even though the county and court system properly addressed them outside the certification process. ⁹ Once again, the other three commissioners outvoted them. ¹⁰

The commission’s 2–3 split flipped, however, after Beadles financed recounts of several local primary races (none of which were affected by the ballot printing errors). Those recounts forced a second certification of the 2024 primary results, including for the primary race of County Commissioner Clara Andriola. ¹¹ Andriola won her primary by nearly 19 points, and the recount confirmed the initial result. ¹² But at the public hearing to certify the recounts, an angry crowd spent several hours raising allegations about the primaries that ranged from small administrative errors to outlandish claims about Serbian efforts to manipulate voting machines. ¹³ At one point, Beadles himself offered an unsubstantiated data analysis that he claimed proved election interference. ¹⁴

Andriola, who was new to her role (the governor had appointed her to the commission in 2023 to fill a Republican vacancy), grew concerned. ¹⁵ Did she and the other commissioners have the discretion to reject the election’s outcome in light of the crowd’s complaints, or did they have a mandatory duty to certify the results? ¹⁶ Her position was further complicated by sustained harassment from election skeptics. ¹⁷ Beadles, for example, disparaged her as “Clara the Clown” on his blog. ¹⁸

The commissioners turned to the county’s assistant district attorney, Nate Edwards, for an answer. As legal counsel for the commission, Edwards should have provided them with a simple, clear instruction: Certifying the final vote totals is a mandatory duty, and refusing to do so could result in criminal charges under state law. ¹⁹ Edwards, however, did the opposite. “You don’t have to vote yes on that, you don’t have to vote no,” he said. “You vote your conscience.” ²⁰

By her own account, Andriola genuinely wanted to provide a platform for her constituents, and the state’s certification deadline meant that she had limited time to confirm whether Edwards’s advice was correct. Acting on his instructions, she cast the decisive vote with Clark and Herman against certification. ²¹

That evening, however, after doing additional research, Andriola realized the error in Edwards’s advice.²²  It would take another full week — and a lawsuit filed by Nevada’s secretary of state — before the county commission could meet to reverse its mistake. ²³ And when it did, the vote remained contested. Andriola and Clark changed their votes, although Clark acknowledged that he did so “with a heavy heart” and only after the district attorney, Edwards’s boss, sent him a letter explaining that refusing to certify could result in criminal charges. Herman persisted in her no vote, reasoning that “there are hills to climb and there are hills to die on and this might be one of those.” ²⁴

Washoe County was hardly alone in its certification dispute. Since 2020, more than 30 rogue local officials in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Virginia have refused to certify election results. ²⁵ In many of these cases, the refusing officials cited claims rooted in election denialism — the false idea that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that widespread fraud persists in U.S. election systems. In other cases, officials such as Andriola appeared to act in response to pressure or incorrect legal advice.

Fortunately, courts and state officials intervened in each of these instances to compel certification.²⁶ But as Washoe County illustrates, that intervention came at the cost of significant time, effort, and scarce government resources during an already busy election season. Local certification delays threatened to disrupt important state and federal certification deadlines. And with each day that they went unresolved, the disputes stoked misinformation and conspiracy theories, fueling distrust in elections and the people who run them. ²⁷

Over the last several years, many of the states affected by certification disputes have been forced into an untenable position, grappling with the sudden and unexpected spike in refusals to certify while also trying to plan for a contentious presidential election. Now that the 2024 cycle has concluded, state legislatures have an opportunity to streamline, clarify, and shore up their statutory frameworks to both prevent and more efficiently resolve future certification disputes.

To be sure, some of the loudest voices against certifying elections have fallen silent since President Donald Trump’s 2024 victory. ²⁸ But many have not. ²⁹ The volume of certification disputes between 2020 and 2024 demonstrates that they are likely to arise whenever a contentious race emerges — that is, in every election cycle. Indeed, many certification disputes have become untethered from the presidential election outcome altogether, instead serving as a mechanism for expressing disagreement or doubt as to any aspect of an election, including for local and state races. ³⁰

This report lays out the steps that state legislatures can take to protect against certification refusals. It begins by walking through several certification disputes that took place during the 2024 election cycle. While it discusses some disputes from prior election cycles, it focuses principally on recent disputes that provide a clearer picture of how future attacks on certification will take shape. It then uses those disputes to identify principles for reform that will provide the strongest safeguards against future attempts to thwart certification.

Although each state’s certification framework differs in its details, these principles fall into four generally applicable categories. First, state legislatures should add to their existing certification statutes language that explicitly clarifies officials’ mandatory duty to certify elections. Second, bodies charged with amending court rules should update those rules to create expedited paths for litigants seeking court orders to compel certification. Third, state legislatures should amend their election laws to grant state officials explicit authority to intervene and complete the certification process if a county refuses to do so. Further, the refusing county should bear any costs associated with that intervention. Finally, state legislatures should create an explicit private right of action for voters to bring legal actions to compel certification.

These simple but effective reforms would protect against the chaos caused by certification refusals, benefiting voters, candidates, and election officials alike.