Breaking: A Critical Win for Election Certification in Georgia
A judge in Georgia just ruled that certifying election results is a required, mandatory duty of being an election official. According to the court,
No election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.
If you’ve been reading this column, you know there’s currently a nationwide battle over election certification. State laws require local election officials to certify results, but election deniers who hold local election positions are threatening to (and, in some cases, already have) deny certification.
In this case, a member of the Fulton County Board of Elections wanted the court’s permission deny certification if she thought fraud occurred in an election, or if she thinks the results are incorrect or not reliable enough to be certified. In a huge win for voters and democracy, the court refused.
The most important part of the court’s order is where the judge explains there are other opportunities in the election process to settle allegations of fraud or mistakes in the results.
Voting rights advocates, election officials, and the media need to do a better job explaining this point. When we say officials aren’t allowed to deny certification if they think there’s fraud, we aren’t saying all investigations of election fraud are off the table. Rather, we’re saying the law already provides a formal process for investigating claims of fraud, and denying certification isn’t that process.
Here’s how the court in Georgia explained it:
This does not leave the superintendent (or board member) without recourse or the means to voice substantive concerns about an election outcome. The Election Code has a tested mechanism for addressing alleged fraud and abuse: election contests.
Election contests arise after the ministerial act of certification. They may be brought by a losing candidate or by any aggrieved elector (voter) -- which includes a superintendent (assuming she voted).
Importantly, election contests occur in open court, under the watchful eye of a judge and the public. The claims of fraud from one side are tested by the opposing side in that open court -- rather than being silently “adjudicated” by a superintendent outside the public space, resulting in votes being excluded from the final count without due process being afforded those electors.
I saw a poll over the weekend that shocked me: 6 in 10 Americans are concerned or very concerned there will be fraud in the upcoming elections. An eye-popping 33% of Democrats are concerned or very concerned there will be fraud (defined as people voting who aren’t eligible, or people voting more than once).
Those numbers show that the right wing’s voter fraud narrative is winning, and that voting advocates and election officials need to do a much better job explaining the safeguards built into our election system if Americans are going to accept the results of the upcoming election. Judge McBurney in Georgia has given us a great example to work from.