Confronting Threats to Election Certification: The Role of State and Local Officials

By law, election certification is a ministerial duty — officials have no discretion whether to certify or not. Nonetheless, in recent years, we’ve seen a number of local officials refuse to certify election results, often based on unfounded claims of fraud and other misinformation about our election systems. This can potentially delay finalizing election results and confuse voters about the election process. State officials and local election administrators have a key role to play in ensuring the prompt certification of election results, which is especially important in our decentralized presidential election process.

In this webinar, you will hear from several officials who have responded to certification threats in prior elections — how the threats arose, what tools they leveraged in responding, and lessons learned for future elections.

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