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35 current officials refused to certify 2020 election: Report

"I Voted" stickers are offered to voters after casting their ballot on Super Tuesday, at the Ranchito Elementary School polling station in the Panorama City in Los Angeles, March 5, 2024.

(NewsNation) — A watchdog group has identified 35 “rogue election officials” from nearly every battleground state who previously refused to certify election results and “may be in a position to do so again.”

A report from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) lists dozens of officials and their positions. It focuses on Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan, the eight states where officials have refused to certify elections since 2020.


CREW also identified legal solutions to election certification challenges, including “emergency court orders to compel compliance with the law, criminal charges to punish and deter misconduct and legal procedures to remove obstructionist officials from their county positions.”

The project joins the growing number of efforts to identify potential bad actors before the November presidential election.

On Sunday, independent journalist Justin Glawe joined “NewsNation Prime” to discuss his recent Rolling Stone exclusive that identified the nearly 70 swing-state officials who are election deniers.

Glawe’s list included officials who had previously refused to certify and those who publicly expressed belief in election denial conspiracies.

“I should note that this isn’t really coming directly from the Trump campaign,” Glawe told NewsNation. “This is what I kind of think of as a decentralized network of pro-Trump Republicans who are also local election officials.”

President Joe Biden echoed these fears in his first cable interview since exiting the 2024 presidential race.

During the CBS sit-down, Biden said he’s unconfident there will be a peaceful transfer of power in November if Trump loses again, citing what the GOP candidate is “doing with local election districts where they count the votes.”