Rachel Maddow lays out how the GOP will try to steal the election for Donald Trump

Lesbian political analyst Rachel Maddow worries that Republican county officials in battleground states could refuse to certify election results in order to help former President Donald Trump win the November 5th presidential election. If enough states don’t report a clear election winner, the result would be decided by the House of Representatives, a congressional chamber that is under Republican control, all but guaranteeing a Trump victory.

“Republicans have quietly seeded county and state election boards with eag er allies,” Maddow wrote in a recent op-ed for The New York Times. “Election boards across the country now include Republican officials who have not only propounded Mr. Trump’s lies about the last presidential election being ‘stolen,’ they have tested how far they can go in denying the certification of the vote.”

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“Donald Trump would sell this country for $1 if it meant lining his own pockets,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said.

Maddow noted that Republicans have tried this ploy more than two dozen times in at least eight states since 2020. In all cases, the “refusenik” officials who “delayed or refused to certify the votes ultimately relented under legal pressure,” she wrote.

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She then notes that the Georgia State Election Board recently approved a rule giving election officials in each of the state’s 159 counties the option to delay or refuse certification in order to make a “reasonable inquiry” into the results. However, the new rule doesn’t clearly define what a “reasonable inquiry” is. Another rule under consideration would allow members of county election boards to demand to see “all election-related documentation” before certifying the results.

“In a state where Republicans have delayed or refused certification at least seven times since 2020 — more than in any other state — the rule injects a new layer of murk into the legal waters less than 100 days before the election.”

To illustrate her point, Maddow tells readers to imagine an Election Night scenario in which Georgia’s Republican officials begin refusing to certify election results in their counties, citing “reasonable inquiries” into unspecified “problems.” Similar officials in other crucial swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Nevada could report similar scenarios.

“Under recently revised federal law, each state has until December 11 to send official, certified state results to Washington for the Electoral College count. But if a state doesn’t meet that deadline, then what?” she asks, adding, “The point of these certification refusals may not be to falsify or flip a result, but simply to prevent the emergence of one.”

If one or more states fail to produce official results, the Constitution’s 12th Amendment states that the newly elected House of Representatives shall hold a vote for president, with each state delegation in the chamber getting one vote. Today, Republicans control a majority of state delegations, though that could change by the time of the chamber’s vote.

“Our democratic system is not invincible, but it is strong,” Maddow writes. “Certification of election results is a ministerial responsibility that is not discretionary. Legitimate election challenges are handled with recounts and litigation, not by individual election board members. There is no loophole that allows bad-faith officials to so flummox the electoral system that they take the choice of the next president away from the American people.”

However, she has noted that Trump and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley have both signaled a willingness to delay the vote’s certification. An official with the Heritage Foundation, the anti-LGBTQ+ conservative think tank behind Project 2025, said that “the conditions” in the country are now such that “most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election.”

“Refusals to certify results should not necessarily be seen as indicating real electoral problems; they are more likely part of a bad-faith strategy to mess with the democratic process,” Maddow writes. “Opponents no doubt will fight any certification denials in the courts. Those efforts are important, and every state should be shoring up its own legal and electoral system now to prepare for, deter and defend against any effort to sabotage certification. But stopping such subterfuge also depends on an informed public that refuses to let false narratives take hold.”

Towards that end, Maddow suggests that readers get to know their local election board, be vigilant, and be unsurprised if Republican officials refuse to certify the votes in order to “maximize chaos and upset.”

The New York Times recently reported that the election campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris “has assembled an expansive senior legal team that will oversee hundreds of lawyers and thousands of volunteers in a sprawling operation designed to be a bulwark against what Democrats expect to be an aggressive Republican effort to challenge voters, rules and, possibly, the results of the 2024 election.”

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