Georgia gives local officials new powers to investigate election results

Georgia gave local officials significant new powers over the certification of elections results on Tuesday, a move that could delay or derail future post-election certification processes.

In a 3-2 vote, the Republican-controlled State Election Board voted to define the certification of election results as “attest, after reasonable inquiry, that the tabulation and canvassing of the election are complete and accurate and that the election results are a true and accurate accounting of all votes cast in that election.”

The rule does not define "reasonable inquiry," which means that different counties will likely interpret the rule differently. It's expected to allow county election boards to request information and potentially delay or block certification of results if they see fit. And the resulting delays could block the timely reporting of election results to state and federal authorities.

Local certification of election results was once a routine, ministerial process. But after the 2020 vote, then-President Donald Trump and his allies sought to block the process, arguing that officials have discretion to delay or block certification and hoping to use state and county officials to overturn the election results.

Since then, a handful of counties around the country have attempted or toyed with the idea of not certifying elections, though those efforts have all failed — typically after state courts intervened.

At a recent rally, Trump cheered on the three members of the Georgia elections board who voted to approve the rule change.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Georgia State Election [Board] is in a very positive way,” the former president told a cheering Georgia crowd on Saturday. “They’re on fire, they’re doing a great job. Three members: Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King. Three people, they’re all pit bulls, fighting for honesty, transparency and victory. They’re fighting.”

It’s unclear what will happen if counties refuse to certify the results by the statutory deadline. This year, counties are required to certify elections by 5 p.m. on Nov. 12, a week after the Nov. 5 election. The state is required to certify by Nov. 22.

“While the certification is largely ceremonial, it’s still got to be done to be processed and if it’s not done there better be a darn good reason,” Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, said ahead of the vote.

If an entire board refused to certify due to conspiracy theories, Hassinger said, “they’re going to face serious consequences.”

In other states where counties have refused to certify, that’s exactly what’s happened. In Arizona, two Cochise County supervisors face felony charges for delaying the 2022 election certification of election results there.

In New Mexico, Otero County officials talked up conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines when they initially declined to certify the election results, before later being ordered by a state court to certify the results. A county commissioner later changed her vote, fearing criminal prosecution and jail time. The move nearly disenfranchised an entire county’s votes, the New Mexico secretary of state told NBC News at the time.

Voting rights advocates and opponents of the change argued in written and spoken testimony, conveyed during a 9-hour meeting of the State Election Board on Tuesday, that Georgia state law does not support such a change. They argued that the law lays out narrow requirements for local officials and that “reasonable inquiry” gives those officials enormous leeway.

"Georgia has 159 counties. What’s reasonable to board members in one county may not be reasonable to members in another county, or individual board members in the same county may disagree on what’s reasonable," said Nikhel Sus, an attorney for the left-leaning watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics.

But after nine hours of debate, the three members Trump celebrated on Saturday voted for the change. The Board's lone Democrat, Sara Tindall Ghazal, and Board Chair John Fervier, who was appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp, voted against the rule. Fervier said he supported the idea of inquiry, but not without "guardrails."