NewsTrump-Aligned Group Targets Election Officials With Ads Suggesting They Don’t Have To...

Trump-Aligned Group Targets Election Officials With Ads Suggesting They Don’t Have To Certify Results

This article first appeared at ProPublica and Wisconsin Watch. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Earlier this month, subscribers to the Wisconsin Law Journal received an email with an urgent subject: “Upholding Election Integrity — A Call to Action for Attorneys.”

The letter began by talking about fairness and following the law in elections. But it then suggested that election officials do something that courts have found to be illegal for over a century: treat the certification of election results as an option, not an obligation.

The large logo at the top of the email gave the impression that it was an official correspondence from the respected legal newspaper, though smaller print said it was sent on behalf of a public relations company. The missive was an advertisement from a new group with deep ties to activists who have challenged the legitimacy of recent American elections.

The group, Follow the Law, has placed ads in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin news outlets serving attorneys, judges and election administrators — individuals who could be involved in election disputes. In Georgia, it ran ads supporting the State Election Board as its majority, backed by former President Donald Trump, passed a rule that experts warned could have allowed county board members to exclude enough Democratic votes to impact the presidential election. (A judge later struck down the rule as “illegal, unconstitutional and void.”)

In making its arguments about certification, Follow the Law has mischaracterized election rules and directed readers to a website providing an incomplete and inaccurate description of how certification works and what the laws and rules are in various states, election experts and state officials said.

“Anyone relying on that website is being deceived, and whoever is responsible for its content is being dishonest,” said Mike Hassinger, public information officer for Georgia’s secretary of state.

Certification is the mandatory administrative process that officials undertake after they finish counting and adjudicating ballots. Official results need to be certified by tight deadlines, so they can be aggregated and certified at the state and federal levels. Other procedures like lawsuits and recounts exist to check or challenge election outcomes, but those typically cannot commence until certification occurs. If officials fail to meet those deadlines or exclude a subset of votes, courts could order them to certify, as they have done in the past. But experts have warned that, in a worst-case scenario, the transition of power could be thrown into chaos.

“These ads make it seem as if there’s only one way for election officials to show that they’re on the ball, and that is to delay or refuse to certify an election. And just simply put, that is not their role,” said Sarah Gonski, an Arizona elections attorney and senior policy adviser for the Institute for Responsive Government, a think tank working on election issues.

 » …

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Subscribe Today

GET EXCLUSIVE FULL ACCESS TO PREMIUM CONTENT

SUPPORT NONPROFIT JOURNALISM

EXPERT ANALYSIS OF AND EMERGING TRENDS IN CHILD WELFARE AND JUVENILE JUSTICE

TOPICAL VIDEO WEBINARS

Get unlimited access to our EXCLUSIVE Content and our archive of subscriber stories.

Exclusive content

Latest article

More article