Certification of elections in the US is something traditionally routine that became politicized in the Trump era

For the outcome of this year’s presidential race, it will be the vote counting on election night and possibly in the days afterward that will capture the public’s attention. But those numbers are not official until the election is formally certified, a process that previously passed without incident and that has become politicized since then-president Donald Trump tried to reverse his defeat in his re-election attempt four years ago.

Trump unsuccessfully lobbied his fellow Republicans on an evenly divided board that had to approve Michigan’s vote to not certify his defeat in the state.

On January 6, 2021, he ordered his supporters to march to the Capitol and prevent Congress from taking the final step to certify that Democrat Joe Biden had won the presidency.

This year, Trump allies have set the stage to try to block certification if Trump loses to Democrat Kamala Harris. The best way to think about certification is as a three-step process.

It all starts with local governments, like counties. Then it goes to the states, which add up all the local totals to certify the winner and designate the presidential delegates or collegiate voters. Finally, Congress effectively certifies the votes of those delegates or collegiate voters.

The process can seem overwhelming, especially at the local level. Most of the country’s thousands of individual election jurisdictions — many of which have been taken over by Trump supporters — have to officially certify their vote counts before a state can certify a winner. If even one of those counties refuses to certify, it could prevent the state from completing the process.

Legal experts say there is no real legal risk that Trump’s allies could reverse a defeat if they refuse to certify locally. Decades of case law hold that local officials have no choice but to certify election results. Any potential problems with the vote count can be challenged in court, but not before the boards and commissions that have the ceremonial task of certifying vote counts and transmitting them to the state.

Trump supporters have attempted to block election results in Arizona, Michigan and New Mexico since 2020 by refusing to certify them, only to be forced by courts to conclude the process, or reverse their efforts under legal pressure.

The idea that a single board could stop a state by refusing to certify is “this crazy fantasy that has conflated the right and the left,” said Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame.

In 2020, Trump focused intensely on getting Republican state leaders to refuse to certify his losses and send their own list of electors, or collegiate voters, to the Electoral College. That failed everywhere.

In 2024, four of the six non-leaning states where Trump contested his defeat are led by Democratic governors. In the other two, Republican governors do not seem willing to accept a possible attempt by Trump to stop certification. Georgia’s Brian Kemp challenged Trump in 2020, and Nevada’s Joe Lombardo was elected in 2022 with Democratic votes.

The last step in the certification process is in Congress on January 6. Once states have certified their winners and selected their electors, and those electors have cast their votes for president, the Constitution requires Congress to formally count those votes.

That’s what Trump and his supporters tried to take advantage of in 2020 by arguing that Congress could choose to reject Electoral College votes from states where they didn’t trust the vote count.

Even after the assault on the Capitol, a majority of House Republicans — 139 of them — and eight Republican senators voted to reject Biden’s electors or collegiate voters from Pennsylvania. Those weren’t enough votes to change the outcome of the election, but it’s a sign they could try again if Harris wins.

A bipartisan majority in Congress not only confirmed Biden’s 2020 victory, but then changed the law governing how Congress certifies a presidential election to make it much more difficult to reject Electoral College votes. If Harris wins, we will see if that majority still holds on January 6 to confirm her victory.

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