Trump looks to block state certification of US election results after...

Arriving nowhere in the courts, US President Donald Trump’s dispersed effort to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory moves to obscure election commissions that certify the vote as Trump and his allies seek to reverse the process election, sowing chaos and perpetuating unfounded doubts about the count.The battle centers on the battlefield states that sealed Biden’s victory.

In Michigan, two Republican election officials from the state’s largest county initially refused to certify the results despite the lack of evidence of fraud. In Arizona, officials are reluctant to approve the vote count in a rural county.

These steps do not reflect a coordinated effort in the battlefield states that erupted for Biden, local election officials said. Instead, they appear to be inspired by Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric of baseless fraud and motivated by Republican acquiescence to vices against the country’s electoral system as state and federal courts dismiss lawsuits brought by Trump and its allies.

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Yet what transpired in Wayne County, Michigan on Tuesday was a shocking reminder of the disruption that may still be caused as the country works to affirm the November 3 election result.

There is no precedent for the Trump team’s widespread effort to delay or undermine certification, according to University of Kentucky law professor Joshua Douglas.

“It would be the end of democracy as we know it,” Douglas said. “It’s just not a thing that can happen.”

Certification of results is a common but important step after local election officials have counted the votes, reviewed procedures, checked to ensure the votes were correctly counted, and investigated discrepancies. Typically, this certification is carried out by a local election commission, and then, later, the results are certified at the state level.

But as Trump refused to concede to Biden and continues to spread false declarations of victory, this mundane process takes on new meaning.

Among the major states on the battlefield, the counties of Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin have all taken the initial stage of certification of results. With the exception of Wayne County, this process has gone smoothly. Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia have yet to conclude their local certifications.

Then all eyes are on statewide certification.

In Wayne County, the two Republican canvassers at first hesitated to certify the vote, winning praise from Trump, then turned the tide after widespread condemnation. A person familiar with the matter said Trump reached out to canvassers Monica Palmer and William Hartmann on Tuesday evening after the revised vote to express his gratitude for their support.

Time is running out for Trump. Across the country, recounts and court challenges must be completed and election results must be certified by December 8. This is the constitutional deadline before the Electoral College meeting the following week.

Matt Morgan, the general counsel for the Trump campaign, said last week that the campaign is trying to stop certification in battlefield states until it can better manage the vote count and if it would have the right to automatic recounts. Right now, Trump is calling for a Wisconsin recount in two counties, and Georgia is performing a manual Audit after Biden was led by a slim 0.3 percentage point margin, but there is no State compulsory recount law. The law offers this option to a candidate who follows if the margin is less than 0.5 percentage point.

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Some in the president’s orbit have hoped that by delaying certification, state legislatures in GOP-controlled states will have a chance to select different voters, either by nullifying Biden’s victory or by sending him to the House, where Trump would almost surely win.

But most of the president’s advisers consider it a feverish dream. Trump’s team has been unable to organize even basic legal activities since the election, let alone the large-scale political and legal apparatus needed to persuade state lawmakers to try and undermine the will of voters to their states.

Lawsuits have been brought by Trump allies in Michigan and Nevada to try to stop certification. Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, pleaded Tuesday to stop the certification of votes in Pennsylvania, the first time he had been in a courtroom in decades. And the same day, the Arizona Republican Party asked a judge to bar Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, from certifying until the court renders a ruling on the party’s lawsuit. requesting a re-count of a sample ballot manually.

The party is also pressing state county officials to delay certification, even though there is no evidence of legitimate vote count questions showing Biden won Arizona.

“The party is pushing not only that county supervisors, but also all those responsible for certifying and prospecting for elections, to ensure that all questions are answered so that voters have confidence in the results of the election. the election, ”said Arizona spokesperson Zach Henry. Republican Party.

As most counties in Arizona push forward with certification, Mohave County officials decided to delay until Nov. 23, citing what they said was uncertainty over the fate of electoral challenges across the country.

“There are lawsuits all over the place, and that’s part of the reason I’m in no rush to run for the election,” Mohave County Supervisor Ron Gould said Monday.

Officials from Georgia’s 159 counties were supposed to have certified their results last Friday. But a few have yet to certify that the state is functioning through a manual count of around 5 million votes.

“They are overwhelmed and trying to do everything,” said Gabriel Sterling, a senior official in the Georgia Secretary of State’s office. “Some of them are smaller counties with less resources, and there are only a limited number of people who can do so much.”

In addition, a few counties must recertify their results after previously uncounted votes were discovered during the audit.

Once counties have certified, attention turns to the state-level officials who are responsible for signing the election. It varies by state. For example, a bipartisan panel in Michigan certifies the election, but in Georgia it is the responsibility of the secretary of state elect, who has previously been called upon to resign from fellow Republicans.

In Nevada, Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske’s role in certification is largely ministerial, but she still received a batch of emails urging her not to certify “potentially fraudulent election results,” a spokesperson said on Wednesday. word. The Justice Department had investigated a potential case of voter registration fraud in the state, but a PA analysis found the case does not appear to hold much water.

In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Republican board member Joyce Dombroski-Gebhardt said she would not certify county elections without an audit of at least 10% of the vote to ensure that some voters did not vote twice.

Trump won the county, where the electoral board is made up of three Democrats and two Republicans. Council Democrat Peter Oullette said he has no doubts the rest of the council will sign the certification on Monday.

Philadelphia also intended to certify the results on Monday.

And some delays could still occur given the overwhelming workload that election officials have faced this year during the pandemic, according to Suzanne Almeida of Common Cause Pennsylvania, a good government group that helps with voter education and oversees the electoral work in the state.

“A delay in certification doesn’t necessarily mean there is shenanigans; Sometimes it just takes longer to go through all the mechanisms to get certified, ”said Almeida.

Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press editors Bob Christie and Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Kate Brumback in Atlanta; and Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed to this report.