Almost 100 local election officials across U.S. support Trump's election lies. Here's what you can do about it.

After years of investigation, American Doom reveals nearly 100 local election denial officials in 11 states.

Last week, the Georgia State Election Board rammed through changes to state election rules that will likely result in chaos benefiting Donald Trump. It’s part of a larger pattern of election officials across the country enacting policies and engaging in behavior that is based on — and supports — Trump’s false claims of widespread election fraud. 

Put another way: Republican election officials nationwide are engaged in an effort to call November’s results into question before a single vote has been cast. 

These efforts are concerning for those who care about the health of democracy and the free and fair elections that are supposed to come with it. That concern was expressed to me in voluminous form following my story on local election denial officials here and at Rolling Stone. In the wake of that story, I’ve been inundated with questions and comments about what exactly all of this means, how it can be stopped, and what these officials plan to do. So I thought I’d do my best to answer some of those questions while also providing a list of the 99 local election denial officials I’ve discovered in the last four years. 

Most editions of American Doom are free, but the list of these 99 officials at the end of this post is behind a paywall. That’s because it’s the result of four years of investigation — research that no other publication has taken the time to conduct in as comprehensive a manner as I have here at American Doom. If you want to support my efforts to expose local election denial officials, far-right extremists and other threats to democracy, you can subscribe to American Doom for as little as $5 a month. Paid subscribers in the U.S. are eligible to receive a limited-edition “American Doom 2024” sticker.

Now, let’s discuss the local election officials who believe in Trump’s election lies — and who are at work in states across the country.

Who are these officials?

American Doom has spent the last six months scouring local and national media reports, public databases of election deniers and, most importantly, social media to construct our list of local election denial officials. (That’s on top of my work, which began in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, of documenting these officials in Georgia and elsewhere.) What we found were nearly 70 officials who work in local elections in six swing states — this typically means county election boards — who have expressed election denier beliefs online or have engaged in denier activity, like refusing to certify election results. 

We have defined “election deniers” as officials who believe and support lies about the 2020 election, have questioned results of subsequent and future elections, and have implemented policies based on falsehoods and conspiracies about widespread voter fraud that even conservative groups have said does not exist.

We searched for these officials in key counties within the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. We did not look at every county within those states, although in some of those states, like Georgia, we did go beyond the scope of pivot counties, primarily because I’ve been investigating election denial officials here in Georgia for the last four years. (Another 30 election deniers are at work in Mississippi and Arkansas.) 

This means that the list at the center of the Rolling Stone story from last week is just “the tip of the iceberg,” as Democratic lawyer Marc Elias put it. 

Dozens more officials in our target counties were on the cusp of being election deniers, but we just couldn’t confirm their exact beliefs through open source research, or because they didn’t have social media accounts we could identify. There are likely hundreds more officials who qualify as election deniers in the 19 states that have local election administration, but with just two of us performing the research, we’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of this investigation. 

How do you know they’re election deniers?

While many of the officials on our list were included because of statements they made online, at least 22 of them made the list because they refused or delayed the certification of election results. This is an obvious election denier tactic. In each of those cases — which amount to at least 25 attempts to deny or delay certification since 2020 — the refusal to certify came under the guise of investigating election fraud, and was carried out by Republicans. In the context of the last four years and heading into November, certification refusal can be considered an act of election denialism.

Certification refusal does not mean throwing out votes

Elias’ Democracy Docket has a good explainer on the issue of certification that I encourage everyone to read. For the most part, courts have refused to uphold certification refusal in recent years, but as I wrote at Rolling Stone this isn’t necessarily the point. By refusing to certify results based on bogus fraud claims, local election officials are giving credibility to those claims. That credibility can then be used for lawsuits filed by Republicans claiming fraud in November. We know this is a tactic that will probably be used because the Trump White House used it in 2020. 

Then, election denier lawyers working for Trump floated the idea of seizing voting machines to prove fraud. In a never-issued executive order, the seizure of voting machines was backed up by citing a refusal to certify election results in Coffee County, Georgia. 

Certification refusal is still dangerous

Despite court rulings in recent years against certification refusal, the tactic is still dangerous for two reasons. First, if, as Elias speculated, there are mass refusals to certify in November, the issue could get tied up in court, possibly holding up vote counts for pivot counties and swing states that are vital to determining the next president. After that, if these court battles go as high as the Supreme Court, ruled as it is by justices sympathetic to Trump’s authoritarian interpretation of the presidency, I think we know how that will play out.

The other reason that certification is dangerous is because the credibility it gives to false claims of widespread voter fraud will be seized upon by the right. These claims will spread like a virus, further enraging many Americans who already hold false beliefs about the 2020 election. Mass refusals to certify will inherently increase the chances of extremist actors committing political violence. 

What can be done?

The question that has been posed to me more than any other in recent days is what people can do about all these election denial officials. The answer, unfortunately, is not much. In most of the states in our investigation local election officials are appointed by local political parties. They can’t simply be voted out of office. (In some states, like Mississippi, these county election board members are elected. Some states assign election administration duties to elected county commissioners, like in Nevada and Arizona.) However, even appointed election officials must hold public meetings. Concerned citizens do have the ability to attend these meetings and voice their displeasure at the comments made by some of the officials on our list, or the actions they’ve taken. 

Further, attending meetings will allow citizens to monitor policies being implemented by local election boards and actions they take. These boards hear challenges to remove voters from voter rolls. They have the power to open or close precinct locations. They adjudicate ballots that are unclear as to what candidate a voter has chosen (usually through vote review panels, which are staffed by volunteers). Most importantly, county election boards certify results. Times vary, but counties must begin certifying local election results within a week of the presidential election on Nov. 5. In some places, they have up to a month. (Certification deadlines are listed here.) 

So, the first county election board after the presidential election would be a good one to attend, because in many places that’s when these local officials will have to vote to certify — or not — the results in their counties. But beware: since 2020, many attendees of election board meetings are supporters of Trump’s election lies.

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Below is a running list of local election officials who have been identified by American Doom as election deniers. The methodology behind this research is explained in the July 29, 2024 American Doom and Rolling Stone pieces showing nearly 70 election deniers working as local election officials in six swing states. Below are those officials as well as others in the non-swing states of Arkansas, Colorado, Mississippi and New Mexico. Research remains ongoing for Wisconsin, where we’ve found a lone election denial official. Research remains ongoing in the six swing states and many others.

This list is not complete and will be updated as new officials are discovered or are replaced on their local election bodies. I have compiled this list over the last four years based on media reports, databases of election deniers like Public Wise’s Election Threat Index, and my own research of the social media profiles of hundreds of election denial officials across the country.

Click on the name of an election denier to view evidence of their beliefs and actions based on falsehoods related to elections. Please credit Justin Glawe and American Doom when sharing this list. It has taken years to complete.

To support our efforts to expose local election denier officials, subscribe to American Doom for as little as $5 a month.