State Election Certification Processes and Guardrails

Campaign Legal Center, All Voting is Local, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law and Protect Democracy coauthored guides to election certification and the state laws protecting the certification process in 11 battleground states. The guides explain how state laws can protect against threats or delays to election certification and emphasize that refusal to certify is illegal in each state.

The bottom line across all states is that:

• Certification of election results is a mandatory duty.
• If an official delays or refuses to certify results, state officials and courts can step in to compel certification.
• State officials can hold officials who refuse to certify accountable through civil and criminal penalties.

Additional state-by-state guides can be found below. Each state’s guide provides the legal mechanisms that state and local officials can deploy in response to refusals to certify elections.