Rachel Maddow warns ‘refusenik Republican’ election boards may not certify a Trump loss

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow warned Monday that Republicans on election boards across the country could refuse to certify the 2024 election results should former President Trump lose in November.

“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,” Maddow wrote in an op-ed published with The New York Times.

Maddow argued the spread of what she called “refusenik Republicans” began in 2020, when Trump and then-Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel allegedly pressured two election officials to certify vote totals in a key Michigan county.

Since then, a number of election officials across at least eight states have been charged for alleged efforts to interfere with the certification of the 2020 election and 2022 midterm results, Maddow noted.

The left-leaning pundit laid out a potential November scenario in which the two parties are “trading swing-state victories” on election night to make her case.

“The Democrats capture Nevada, while the Republicans take Arizona. The Republicans win the big prize of Pennsylvania, while the Democrats top them in Wisconsin and Michigan. The nation is waiting on Georgia. If Georgia goes red, it’s President Trump; if Georgia goes blue, it’s President Harris,” she wrote.

“Then, local news headlines start to circulate. There are reports of unspecified ‘problems’ in the vote in Fulton County. And in Gwinnett County. And in DeKalb, Coffee and Spalding Counties. Republican officials are refusing to certify the results in their counties,” she continued. “They say they are making ‘reasonable inquiries.’”

Maddow warned legal challenges would follow through courts, mixed with a “wave of disinformation, confusion and propaganda swells” and claims that something is “amiss” in the Georgia counties.

The Georgia State Election Board is slated Monday consider a revision to its rules that would give county election board members another option for delaying or refusing certification, Maddow said.

The proposal comes after the state election board approved a different rule earlier this month that gave election officials in each state county the option to delay or refuse certification to allow them to make a “reasonable inquiry” as to whether “the results are a true and accurate accounting of all votes cast in that election,” per the Times.

The rule “injects a new layer of murk into the legal waters” ahead of the election, Maddow argued, pointing to a report about how Republicans in Georgia delayed or refused certification at least seven times since 2020.

“The point of these certification refusals may not be to falsify or flip a result, but simply to prevent the emergence of one,” she wrote.

Should one or more states fail to hand over official results and prevent the candidates from reaching 270 electoral voters, the 12th Amendment would require a vote of the newly elected House of Representatives to determine the next president.

“Our democratic system is not invincible, but it is strong. Certification of election results is a ministerial responsibility that is not discretionary,” Maddow wrote. “Legitimate election challenges are handled with recounts and litigation, not by individual election board members.”

She suggested readers become familiar with their local election board, writing “public awareness and vigilance can make a difference.”

“No one should be surprised when certification refusals happen or when they are then exploited to try to maximize chaos and upset,” she said.

Trump maintains the 2020 election was fraudulently decided in President Biden’s favor, despite the various recounts and investigations that concluded otherwise and found no meaningful evidence of fraud that would have changed election results.

His repeated remarks about voter fraud on the campaign trail this year have stoked further concerns he will continue this rhetoric should he lose in November.