Swing-state election officials move aggressively to guard against a repeat of 2020’s disruptions

(CNN) — In Arizona’s third most-populous county, a Republican supervisor who is responsible for certifying November’s election results has argued that fellow county officials conspired to manufacture his lopsided defeat in the primary for sheriff, a contention recently shot down by independent investigators. Still, when the time came to sign off on the results during a board meeting recently, Pinal County Supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh declared he only was voting to do so “under duress.”

In the years since former President Donald Trump and his allies made baseless claims that widespread fraud led to his 2020 defeat, allegations of wild election misdeeds continue to swirl in key battleground states. So, too, have confrontations over voting rules and the once low-profile task of formally signing off on vote tallies – an act mandated by state laws and what will be a crucial step in certifying the results of next month’s presidential election and down-ballot contests.

But as Election Day draws near, state officials say they have moved aggressively to guard against any disruptions in what polls show could be another nail-biter election – the battle for the White House between Trump and his Democratic rival Vice President Kamala Harris. Those measures include schooling judges on the tight deadlines that election officials face under state and federal laws and, in the most extreme examples, pursuing criminal charges against those who resist carrying out their duties.

Election chiefs say they are hopeful that these steps will curb any post-election drama.

In Wisconsin – a battleground state where election conspiracy theories took root after President Joe Biden flipped the state in 2020 – Ann Jacobs, the chair of the state elections board, said she believes that “whatever saber-rattling you hear will eventually dissipate.”

“I’m learning that there are people prepared to go to prison for long sentences with a misguided belief in conspiracy theories surrounding elections,” Jacobs, a Democrat, told reporters during a recent briefing on the state’s election procedures. “But I think those people are very few and far between.”

Steep consequences

Skirmishes over election administration and certification have cropped up all over the country, along with steep consequences for those who buck the rules.

Voting rights and government ethics groups say they are particularly attuned to any delays to certification that could have a cascading effect and risk states missing the December 11 federal deadline to certify their slates of presidential electors – paving the way for chaos and confusion.

“The sanctity of our elections is unquestioned and trying to stop that can and should have serious consequences,” said Jordan Libowitz, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which recently issued a report that warned of continued certification threats.

In all, 35 local officials from across the country have refused or threatened to refuse to certify election results since the 2020 election, according to the group’s analysis.

That tally includes two GOP members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers who briefly threw the Michigan’s 2020 election results into question when they initially declined to certify the county’s tally – which included votes cast for Biden in heavily Democratic Detroit. They relented hours later.

Partly in response to the chaotic aftermath of the 2020 election, voters in Michigan, a presidential swing state, in 2022 approved a constitutional amendment that, among other provisions, reaffirms that election boards have a legal responsibility to certify the results as tallied.

And this year, a top aide to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson warned of legal and financial consequences for officials in a small, rural county in the Upper Peninsula after two Republican board members voted against certifying the votes of a local recall election. The board members quickly backed down.

In North Carolina, another hotly contested state in the 2024 battle for the White House, the State Board of Elections last year took the extraordinary step of removing two local election board members who refused to certify results in their county to protest the state’s election guidance.

It marked the first time that North Carolina officials at the state level had exercised their removal powers in a certification dispute.

And in Arizona, a state that has become a hotbed of election conspiracy theories since Biden narrowly won the state four years ago, two Republican members of the Cochise County Board of Supervisors are slated to go on trial in January on criminal charges over their refusal to certify the county’s 2022 general election results by the legal deadline.

A grand jury indicted the GOP officials, Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby, on felony conspiracy and election interference charges. They had resisted signing off on the results over questions on whether vote-tallying machines had been properly certified. State officials said the machines had been.

Judd and Crosby have pleaded not guilty, and both remain on the county’s three-member board of supervisors.

Arizona’s Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, who pursued the indictment against the Cochise officials, has demonstrated that she “is holding on to a bit of a hammer” should other officials refuse to carry out their duties, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, told reporters recently.

Last month, a federal judge blocked Fontes from using that what the secretary described as a “nuclear option” that he had included in the state’s election procedures manual. It would have allowed him to move ahead with certifying the state’s election results, even if a county refused to sign off on its own results.

But the ruling also noted the other tools at Fontes’ disposal to ensure compliance – including pursuing criminal charges against individual supervisors and seeking court orders to force certification.

Fontes said he and other state officials are “gaming out” their legal strategies to respond to any challenges that arise before, during or after Election Day. Additionally, he said, his office is sharing key deadlines with judges to ensure that legal disputes are quickly resolved.

In Pennsylvania, another key battleground and where state officials went to court to compel three counties to sign off on full results in the 2022 midterms, Secretary of State Al Schmidt said his office also is working closely with the judicial branch to ensure judges remain “mindful of the election calendar.”

Schmidt, a Republican serving in the administration of Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, said he will soon wrap his mission to visit all 67 Pennsylvania counties before Election Day as part of the push to coordinate with local election officials and head off any problems.

He said he doesn’t expect a repeat of recent certification dramas but is prepared to deal with them.

“The election directors I’ve met in red counties and blue counties and in big cities and in rural counties have been very professional, and I’m confident they will carry out their responsibilities in November,” Schmidt told CNN.

Joanna Lydgate, the president and CEO of the bipartisan States United Democracy Center, noted that, despite concerns in pockets of the country, every effort to derail certification since the 2020 election has failed.

“It is a ministerial step,” Lydgate told CNN. “This is not the place for working through questions or concerns about how the election was run.”

‘No option to vote no’

In Pinal County – a fast-growing area southeast of Phoenix – Cavanaugh sought to do just that, pressing forward with claims that his primary loss, by a 2-1 margin, in the race for Pinal County Sheriff was tarnished by fraud.

At a contentious hearing in August on certifying the primary results, Cavanaugh repeatedly tried to raise his allegations of cheating over the objection of fellow Republican, Board Chair Mike Goodman, who banged on his gavel to quiet Cavanaugh and, at one point, threatened to cut off his microphone.

The retired police detective said he first became suspicious about the primary election because of what he viewed as unusually similar patterns in results from both early voting and Election Day ballots. That has ballooned into allegations from Cavanaugh that workers and other elected officials conspired to “modify the results” and transferred roughly 35% of his votes to his rival, according to a formal claim he has filed against the county. The claim notice – in which he is seeking compensation for his campaign expenses and attorneys’ fees – serves as a precursor to a potential lawsuit, he said.

Pinal elections have had issues, including errors on ballots and ballot shortages during the 2022 midterms.

But officials in the county have forcefully denied Cavanaugh’s allegations and have said they trust the results of this year’s primary. An independent analysis commissioned by the county and presented to supervisors last week found “no evidence of fraud, data manipulation, or other factors that could have impacted the election results.”

Cavanaugh remains on the board through the end of the year – giving him a role in certifying November’s election results in this key swing state. He told CNN in an interview earlier this month that he intends that carry out that responsibility, despite his contention that he does not trust how the county administers elections.

“It’s a ministerial duty,” he said, pointing to the Cochise County prosecutions. “We have no option to vote no.”

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