70 Republican Election Officials in Swing States Preparing 'Not to Certify' Results in November

The unending MAGA nightmare promises to push the country into another crisis if Trump loses in November.

Courtesy of the New York Times

This is what a liar looks like in Michigan. In 2020, Meshawn Maddock was not an election official but tried to pass as one so she and her husband, an elected Republican representative of the state, could push not to certify the results. The plan was to send fraudulent results to Washington, claiming that Trump had won the presidency. She was arrested.

Republicans won’t need to revert to such ridiculous and clumsy efforts after the 2024 election. Currently, 70 election officials are working in the states that will determine the next presidential outcome who are rabid election deniers. They consider Joe Biden to be an illegitimate president and that Donald Trump was cheated out of his victory. Their mission in the next election is not to accept any results that don’t have Donald Trump as the winner. 

At least 70 pro–Donald Trump election denialists are working as election officials in key swing states, according to a report published Monday from Rolling Stone and the right-wing extremism research newsletter American Doom.

Officials who had promoted election conspiracy theories were identified in at least 16 counties in six swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. These individuals were identified through scouring coverage of refusals to certify 2020 election results and other denialist behavior, as well as sifting through the social media profiles of election officials in these states.

Across these swing states, Trump loyalists stand ready to disrupt the results of democratically held elections — at least 22 of them have already refused or delayed certification in recent years, indicating likely chaos in November (Terrifying Threat of Trump’s Election Deniers).

In a worst-case scenario, these cult members will prevent votes from these critical states from being certified. The election will slip into an amorphous state of chaos, and sooner or later, violence will occur, and it can’t be guaranteed that the violence will start on the right. In a less dramatic version of how events might unfold, the right-wing treason will be played out in the courts, and then we have to hope that it never reaches the Supreme Court because we know three votes (Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch) will be cast for Trump leaving us with only two votes left for save our democracy. 

What amazes me the most in all of this chaos and law-breaking is that never would a pro-Democratic election official or anyone try to subvert the will of the people for the benefit of an individual. The American right is so far gone that they cannot see how similar their actions are to those used in Russia and other third-rate “authoritarianships.” 

The Rolling Stone journalist who interviewed the 70 election officials said that the only way they could accept results not favorable to Trump would be if all election officials in their state were Trumpists. The belief among the disillusioned cultists is that anyone not part of the cult will lie and cheat to get Kamala Harris elected — after all, that is what they did in 2020, right?

In May, Fulton County election board official Julie Adams launched a lawsuit against the county, hoping to access voting records that she claims she was barred from seeing by Fulton County’s election director, and seeking a court ruling on whether her duty to certify election results is “discretionary, not ministerial, in nature,” according to the suit. Fulton County is a Democratic stronghold.

Adams, a staunch election denier, is backed by the America First Policy Institute, or AFPI, a Trump-supporting think tank. Adams is hoping to upend years of precedent and Georgia state law, according to Protect Democracy, a democratic nonprofit that contends that certifying election results “is a mandatory, ministerial duty, meaning that officials have no discretion to refuse to certify election results.”

Georgia has had the highest number of certification refusals since 2020 of anywhere in the country. Its five-person state election board — which American Doom found contained two election-denying conspiracy theorists — has set to work formulating a new rule that would allow election officials to refuse to certify results if a “reasonable inquiry” can be made into claims of election fraud. The Trump-friendly board has been accused of ethics violations after not giving proper notice to its Democratic members about a meeting that it used to advance election rule changes (Terrifying Threat of Trump’s Election Deniers).

These so-called patriots are the exact opposite of what they believe they are, and they help me, in my historical quest for understanding how Adolf Hitler was able to relatively peacefully seize power in Weimar Germany, get a clearer understanding of the slippery slope down which so many Germany fell in the 1920s and 30s. These election officials, acting out of a “love for Trump,” who they confuse as the epitome of all that makes America great, would be very welcomed on Vladimir Putin’s team.

We should expect many refusals by cult members to certify the results, and we should also expect that if Kamala Harris wins, this, too, will be considered a “fraudulent” election and another victory stolen from Trump. Win or lose in November, the election deniers will only become more determined going into our very murky American future.