After Colorado’s elections for local offices this past November, a state Republican Party official sent out a notice to local board members saying they should vote against certifying the results.

“Nothing has changed since the 2020 elections,” wrote Ron Hanks, who leads the Colorado GOP’s election integrity unit. He called the state “a playground for election manipulators” and alleged “systemic fraud” without providing evidence.

Republicans on five local canvass boards subsequently voted against certifying their results. Even though other board members outweighed the “no” votes, Hanks —a former state lawmaker who later lost his bid for a seat in Congress — laid out their real purpose.

“The elections of 2024 will be an epic battle,” Hanks wrote in his notice, framing the city council and school board votes as a practice run. “Our standing and credibility will be upheld if we reject the corruption of the unchanged voting process — in Colorado and throughout our nation.”

Colorado is part of a nationwide trend in in which local Republican officials vote against certifying elections. Many of these same Republicans question the results of the 2020 presidential election and experts see the votes as testing the waters for discrediting the results of this year’s presidential election.

“It’s a kind of strategy, if it’s a close election, to find a way to slow things down or provide a path for changing election outcomes,” said Rick Hasen, a political science professor at the University of California Los Angeles who runs ElectionLawBlog.org.

Democrat Kamala Harris is counting on Colorado’s 10 electoral votes to win the election. And down the ballot, there are competitive races for the House of Representatives, which Republicans only narrowly control: A moderate Democrat is trying to win an open seat and there’s also a close race for a bellwether district just north of Denver.

Colorado Republicans back up votes with debunked talking points

Colorado’s elections are certified by local canvass boards with three members. The Democratic Party appoints one, the Republican Party appoints another, and the elected county clerk or recorder either serves themselves or designates someone.

While Democrat and the county official have consistently outvoted the lone Republicans who voted against certification, there’s nonetheless been a consistent drum of Republicans on local canvass boards voting against certifying results.

“The Colorado Republican Party encourages members to do whatever they think is appropriate given the information that is presented as they serve on canvassing boards,” party chairman Dave Williams said in an email. “The election results are the main factor that canvassing boards consider, but often there are members who cannot sign off on a potentially untrustworthy process.”

In November 2023, five counties that include the urban areas of Boulder, Colorado Springs, Durango, Fort Collins and Lakewood all had members cast votes against certifying results for seats such as city council and school board. “No” votes came again in three counties during the March presidential primary and the downballot primary in June.

John Barrett, the Republican member of the Boulder County canvassing board, told YSL News his vote not to certify June’s local election results wasn’t prompted by the Colorado Republican Party. He pointed to comments he made in July that raised questions about training adequacy for performing signature verification and the security of drop boxes in Colorado’s mostly-mail elections.

Barrett did not answer which candidate won the 2020 presidential election and said whether he votes to certify the November presidential election will depend on the actions of the county clerk. He said the points he made about the election benefit “all voters, not any specific party.”

Candice Stutzriem, who voted against certifying results in the county that includes Colorado Springs in November, March and then June, wrote a report in December outlining the reasons she voted against certification. The county’s Republican Party posted it on their website.

“There’s no way to prove there is a single, verified, legal voter behind each ballot cast,” Stutzriem alleged. She also made claims about the dependability of voting machines and ballot boxes — arguments that Trump supporters embrace, but election watchdogs debunked.

Stutzriem and did not respond to multiple messages from YSL News seeking comment.

Stutzriem’s predecessor, Adriana Cuva, who voted against certification of city council and school board races in November 2021 and a June 2022 primary, told YSL News her vote “wasn’t prompted by the Republican Party.”

“As a canvass board member, you are an independent board member,” Cuva said. “You are to make your own opinions on why you certify or not.”

County clerks defend canvass process in Colorado

The justifications given for voting against certification involve general election administration rather than proof of fraud that would change an election result. Colorado county clerks — who are largely elected in partisan races — have been the ones on canvass boards voting with Democrats to certify elections.

“I think the powers driving the election denial movement have been using the last three years as a testing ground for different techniques, different strategies to see what they can do to create confusion and cause chaos in the process,” said Matt Crane, the executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association.

“I would call myself very much a conservative Republican,” Crane said. He called himself more conservative than former Republican President George W. Bush and said he agreed with “the original intent of the Tea Party.” He said the majority of county clerks are Republicans, too.

In Jefferson County, which Joe Biden won in 2020 by about 70,000 votes, local officials are vehemently pushing back on Nancy Pallozzi, the Republican representative on the local canvass board who voted against certifying elections in November, March, and June.

Pallozzi told YSL News there were questions about the chain of custody of ballots and paper ballot encryption, among other things. She did not answer who won the 2020 presidential election, saying only that Biden is the president.

“We’ve worked with Nancy many times and every election she sends us a letter with some sort of reason for not certifying the election, and none of it is ever coherent,” wrote Sarah McAfee, spokesperson for the Jefferson County Clerk and Recorder. “It seems to be some sort of political statement.”

Local opposition could slow down certification of Electoral College

Across the country, it’s common for local boards to certify, or canvass, vote tallies in their areas. The signoff may be the responsibility of a county commission or a county board of elections. Colorado has specialized canvassing boards.

Starting with the 2020 election, there have been at least three dozen times nationwide that local officials have delayed certifying or voted against certifying the results of an election, for races ranging from the presidency to school board, according to a review by YSL News. Many who cast these votes are still serving in office.

The states where this has happened are Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania — a combination of battleground states that both candidates are fighting over and blue states that Harris is expected to win.

The people fighting certification rarely make up a majority, meaning the elections are usually still certified. On the handful of occasions that a majority on a board voted “no” on certifying an election, enough members have reversed their “no” votes at a later date so that the election is certified. In Washoe County, Nevada, the board reversed course within a week.

While it hasn’t happened before, and isn’t likely to happen in the future, Hasen said a successful effort at the local level would stop the state from being able to finalize the statewide results and send electors to the federal government, where the vice president needs to be able to count those electors on Jan. 6 to certify the winner.

If no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes, it would trigger a 12^th Amendment process in which each state’s House members share one vote for president — effectively taking the presidential election out of the hands of the people. (The Senate would choose the vice president.)

“What folks need to understand when we’re talking about not certifying is — that’s not an academic exercise,” said Hannah Fried, the executive director of the voter education group All Voting Is Local. “That’s your vote. That is your vote not being counted.”

When Trump allies sent certificates from fake slates of electors to Washington, one potential outcome was using the same 12^th Amendment process to elect Trump. And Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, said Congress should have responded to those certificates by battling it out.

Colorado put safeguards in place

Crane said his organization is working to make sure that county clerks have everything they need headed into November. He’s concerned that his members will continue to be targeted by “grifters and bad actors” who want them to vote against certifying elections.

“We’ve heard from some Republican canvass board members that they see no issue but they’ve been instructed that they just need to not sign off, and they’re worried about the blowback if they don’t,” Crane said of past elections.

Colorado’s Democratic-led legislature passed a law to allow the secretary of state to step in and certify an election in the event that the local canvass boards won’t. And the current secretary, Democrat Jenna Griswold, has been aggressive about opposing efforts to undermine elections.

“I have the ability to oversee, to take oversight over a county’s elections, and if there is any indication of bad actions, I will not hesitate to make sure that there’s good oversight over a county’s elections,” Griswold told YSL News in July.

National efforts to protect election certification

Trump allies in 2020 wanted legislatures to choose who won the state’s electors in lieu of the voters and they pressured Vice-President Mike Pence not to certify the outcome of the election, but Congress passed a law in 2022 making it clearer that the vice president cannot overturn an election result. And the Supreme Court limited the power of state legislatures — the majority of which are run by Republicans — in federal elections.

In Nevada, after a local board refused to certify an election result — before reversing itself a week later — Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar asked a court to tell them that they had to. The court declined to make a decision.

In the swing state of Georgia, a Fulton County official asked a court to declare that she doesn’t have to certify elections. Three Trump-approved Republicans on a five-person state board passed multiple rules in August that could delay county certifications, including ordering an undefined “reasonable inquiry” into the results by certifying officials.

“They are a mess,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who in 2020 rebuffed Trump’s request to help him “find” votes, said in a statement about the state election board.

In 2022, state officials in North Carolina removed two local board members in the Charlotte area because they refused to sign off on election results. That same year, New Mexico’s secretary of state referred members of a county commission for criminal investigation.

“Officials who are doing this are putting themselves into legal jeopardy, and I would think twice before doing that,” Fried said. “’Is it worth it?’ is a question they should ask themselves.”

Contributing: Aysha Bagchi