Voting rights groups are keeping tabs on roughly two dozen counties as potential hot spots for electoral discord, places that in recent cycles have seen pushback on the certification of results or efforts to disqualify some ballots or common election procedures.
The counties have repeatedly found themselves at the center of legal disputes, some aimed at overturning former President Donald J. Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.
These are some of the places that democracy watchdogs are closely monitoring:
Arizona
Cochise County: This deeply Republican area in the southeastern part of the state has been a cauldron of election-driven conspiracy theories, recycled by the former president’s supporters. Officials there refused to certify the results of the midterm election in 2022. Not long after, the county’s nonpartisan elections director resigned, citing threats against her after she refused to comply with directives from Republicans who control county government. Those officials then installed an election skeptic to oversee voting, prompting the state’s Democratic attorney general to sue the county. Since then, three more people have filled the job, including another election denier, who also resigned, citing intimidation.
And on Oct. 21, one of the Republicans who delayed certification of the 2022 election results pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of failing or refusing to perform her duty as an election officer. Charges are still pending against another Republican who took similar actions and has pleaded not guilty.
Mohave and Pinal Counties flirted in the past with refusing to certify election results, according to the Voting Rights Lab.
Georgia
Fulton County: The Atlanta metro area remains a source of consternation for democracy watchdogs. It’s the most populous county in a swing state that was a focus of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in 2020 and the one where he was charged criminally for election subversion.
At the local level, a right-wing Fulton County commissioner filed a lawsuit earlier this year contending that she had the right to refuse to certify an election. A court rejected that argument on Oct. 14, ruling that the certification process was mandatory. (The county commission is controlled by Democrats, who would be likely to overrule any efforts to block certification anyway.) The judge who wrote the ruling, Robert C.I. McBurney, was the same one who presided over the special grand jury investigation into election interference by Mr. Trump, who was indicted along with 18 allies on criminal charges in Georgia.
Judge McBurney also knocked down a legal fight over whether ballots must be counted by hand earlier this month, blocking a new rule that would have required hand counting for the Nov. 5 election. Counting ballots by hand is less accurate and is more costly and time-consuming than using voting machines, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Spalding County, a Republican stronghold roughly 40 miles south of Atlanta, has become emblematic of right-wing mistrust of election voting machines. Just last year, officials ordered a hand count of ballots before election results could be certified there. Officials in several other places in Georgia have also balked at certifying the election results, including in Cobb, DeKalb and Coffee Counties.
Michigan
Wayne County: Detroit, Michigan’s largest city and an overwhelmingly Democratic one, has been a focus of Mr. Trump’s ire since it played a key role in flipping the swing state to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020. Mr. Trump’s allies have since focused on training poll watchers in the state and questioning voter rolls. In a brief that was unsealed this month in Mr. Trump’s federal election interference case, one of his former operatives was quoted by prosecutors as welcoming a “riot” at a vote-counting center in the city in 2020 after a large batch of Biden ballots was counted.
Delta County: Part of the Upper Peninsula and an area that twice voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump, it initially refused to certify the results of a recall election in May before relenting.
Nevada
Washoe County: Nevada’s second-most-populous county is a microcosm of the competitiveness and of the staying power of election skepticism in the swing state. In July, all three Republican commissioners in the county, which includes Reno, opposed the certification of two recounts of the local primary results from June. Nevada’s attorney general and its secretary of state, who are both Democrats, filed a lawsuit with the state’s Supreme Court asking it to reinforce the legal requirements of local officials to certify election results. The county’s five-member Board of Commissioners reversed its decision, and the court later dismissed the lawsuit.
During the 2022 midterm elections, one of those Republican county commissioners, Jeanne Herman, pushed unsuccessfully to use paper ballots and have them counted by hand, along with posting sheriff’s deputies at polling places. Ms. Herman, a Trump supporter, is still in office.
Nye County: Voting machines have remained taboo in this rural and Republican stronghold, which has tried to do away with their use altogether and count ballots by hand instead. One such plan drew numerous legal challenges during 2022, from groups that included the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada and the Brennan Center for Justice. The county ultimately used machines as its primary mechanism for tabulating votes while also doing hand counts. The official who pushed for the hand count resigned this year.
Esmeralda County: This southwestern Nevada county, with its mining history, ghost towns and fealty to the former president, has become illustrative of the hostility toward election officials. This year, even a Trump supporter, the county’s Republican clerk, was the focus of a recall effort after she repeatedly debunked falsehoods about voting integrity after the 2020 election.
North Carolina
Mecklenburg County: Holding North Carolina, a swing state that no Republican presidential candidate has lost since 2008, appears to be critical for Mr. Trump and his path to victory this fall. He and Vice President Kamala Harris are effectively tied there, according to a New York Times polling average.
In 2020, when Mr. Biden won Mecklenburg, the state’s second-most-populous county and home to Charlotte, Republicans balked at certifying the election results, objecting to the state’s nine-day grace period for receiving absentee ballots that had been postmarked by Election Day. But they were outnumbered on the county’s Board of Elections, which certified the results in a party-line vote (Republicans are outnumbered on the state’s board of elections, too).
Now there is no grace period for returning absentee ballots, according to the state, where the Democratic governor and Republicans who control the State Legislature have clashed over election rules. Ballots must be received by 7:30 p.m. Eastern time on Election Day.
Surry County: Election falsehoods have swirled in the county, which borders Virginia and is part of North Carolina’s Piedmont region. Last year, the state removed two election deniers from the county’s election board after they refused to certify the results of elections in 2022. The state found no irregularities. The ousted officials had criticized a federal judge’s ruling that blocked a photo ID requirement for voters in the state.
Pennsylvania
Luzerne County: In Pennsylvania, where the Harris and Trump campaigns have spent more money on advertising than in any other swing state, this northeastern county has come to symbolize Republican defiance of ministerial election duties. The county resisted certifying the results of this year’s primaries. Twice carried by Mr. Trump, the county also delayed certifying the results of the midterm election in 2022 after a shortage of paper ballots created problems. Two days later, it relented, but not before being sued after it missed the state’s certification deadline.
Multiple counties in Pennsylvania, which seesawed from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden in 2020, have refused to count mail-in ballots that did not have handwritten dates on their return envelopes, as required by state law. The issue over noncompliant ballots remains unsettled. Last month, a lower-court ruling that would have required election officials in the state’s two most populous counties to accept otherwise valid mail-in ballots lacking the handwritten date was thrown out by the state’s Supreme Court. It ruled that the lower court did not have jurisdiction, but did not weigh in on the merits of the case.
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