“With 102 deniers on election boards in the swing states, the potential for creating chaos is enormous.”
More than 100 election officials across eight swing states in the U.S. presidential race have engaged in partisan election denial in recent years, raising fears they could try to turn the November result in favor of Republican nominee Donald Trump, according to a report released Friday.
The 88-page report, produced by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), details the election denial history of 102 county and state election officials in Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. The authors found that election deniers have majority control of 15 county election boards in those states and of the statewide board in Georgia.
“What was striking to us about our research is how much election denialism and the voter fraud lie have infiltrated and taken over the Republican apparatus in each of these critical states,” Arn Pearson, CMD’s executive director, told The Guardian.
You have the right idea, but a bunch of facts are wrong:
the States role is simply in validating and certifying the vote in each state. Once that slate is affirmed by the Governor or Secretary of State, the State’s role is over. This is where the chicanery is still possible, but the tactic of “just have the losing side pretend they won and submit votes anyway” was soundly rejected in 2020/1, with most of those electors now facing charges. (Cases involving Trump have been delayed, but others where prosecutors made the choice to not charge him yet but charge others are progressing). It is more likely that local officials may delay the certification, but I hope State officials overrule that.
They did pass a law overhauling the EC count process, and clarifying that the VPs job in it is simply overseeing it, and she has no power to reject results she doesn’t like. (Besides, Harris will still be VP whe they count the EC votes.)
If there is no EC majority, it doesn’t go back to the States, the POTUS election goes to the House and the VP election goes to the Senate. The catch is that in the House, each State delegation gets one vote, so Wyoming’s lone rep gets the same vote as all 50+ of California’s reps. Republicans hold an advantage here, but a Blue Wave could eliminate it, as it would be the newly elected House making this vote.