California county board members fight election certification after raising election integrity issues

County board members in California and Colorado are still fighting the certification of the presidential election after election integrity issues occurred.

In one California county, supervisors declared the election results “under duress,” while county canvass board members in seven Colorado counties rejected election certification. In both instances, election irregularities had occurred during the November election cycle that resulted in the county board members’ hesitation to certify election results.

California's Shasta County Board of Supervisors Chair Kevin Crye, Patrick Jones, and Chris Kelstrom all voted to declare the general election results “under duress” on Tuesday. The two other supervisors declared the election results without the “under duress” wording.

Shasta County Registrar of Voters Tom Toller told the board during the Tuesday meeting that while supervisors have the legal duty to declare election results, doing so is not necessary to make them official. The supervisors had sent the official results to the state the prior week, signing under penalty of perjury that the results were accurate.

The board’s decision came after many voters asked that the election results not be certified because of issues regarding ink overspray on ballots and voting machine problems in the November election.

Duplication of thousands of ballots

Also during the Tuesday meeting, the board voted to send two letters to the U.S. Department of Justice to ask for an investigation of the ink overspray issue caused by Runbeck Election Services that allegedly led to the duplication of thousands of ballots by the elections office. The board also requested the DOJ to clarify audit log timestamp changes that occurred with the county’s voting machines in the days before the March 5th primary.

Meanwhile, canvass board members in seven Colorado counties voted against the certification of the 2024 general election results, following the Colorado Department of State accidentally posting voting systems passwords online. However, the GOP board members were outnumbered, resulting in the certification of the election in each of the counties.

Republican canvass board members in Archuleta, Boulder, Eagle, El Paso, Gilpin, Jefferson and Larimer counties voted against certification.

Not "an immediate security threat"

In October, the Colorado secretary of state's office announced that the voting systems passwords had been posted online. A spreadsheet with the "partial passwords to certain components of Colorado voting systems" was posted on the Colorado Department of State's website, according to the office.

"This does not pose an immediate security threat to Colorado’s elections, nor will it impact how ballots are counted," the department added.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) said at the time that her office was investigating and workers were changing passwords. A third-party investigation of the incident is ongoing. Some states prohibit county boards from rejecting election certification, while others do not.

There is an argument that the election “certification process is a pro forma exercise,” Honest Elections Project Executive Director Jason Snead told Just the News in October, but he doesn’t believe that is always the case. For instance, when alleged fraud was investigated in the 2018 race for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, a new election was called by the state election board. “In that case, the proper course of action wouldn't be to certify the election,” Snead said.

“If there's evidence of something untoward that happened, it needs to be investigated,” he added. The “worst thing to happen in that case is saying all concerns of election integrity are illegitimate, take away all the power to investigate, and sweep the issues under the rug.”

Michigan is a state where election certification is required, preventing county boards from refusing certification.

In May, Delta County Board of Canvassers in Michigan deadlocked in a 2-2 vote on certifying the May 7th recall election results. Three Republican commissioners on the board faced recall elections and lost by about 3-1 margins after they voted to fire the county administrator in February 2023.

Ministerial duty

The Republican commissioners initially refused to certify the results of the recall election because of the similarity of the vote totals across the three races. After delaying certification, the state elections director sent the board a letter, noting that state law required them to certify the election results. The board then certified the election results. In November 2023, Michigan enacted a law to clarify that local canvassing boards must certify election results.

Following the delay in election certification, Michigan state officials Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) and Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) reminded local canvassing boards “of their ministerial duty to certify election results.” The Democratic officials noted that the Delta County board had been warned of the legal consequences they could face if they didn’t certify the election results, including a misdemeanor charge of Willful Neglect of Duty.

The state’s crackdown on canvassing boards came after 2020, where one Republican on Michigan’s state board of canvassers abstained from voting to certify the presidential election over his concerns of election issues in Detroit. The board member’s concerns came after Republicans on the Wayne County elections board had initially decided to not certify the presidential election results before reversing course.

Snead previously told Just the News that the Michigan law takes “power away from one of the last bipartisan institutions in the state and consolidates it with state officials that are Democratic,” adding that it is a “power grab.”