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When Clara Andriola took her seat at the #WashoeCounty, #Nevada, commission meeting room on July 9, she looked out at a sea of angry faces. The commission is Washoe’s main legislative body, & Andriola, a longtime local business exec, was appointed to fill a vacancy on the 5-person board last year. She had just won a #Republican primary that would almost certainly allow her to keep that seat in the Nov general #election.

The commission was required by #law to #certify elections…, from local primary to presidential #election. What came next should have been a simple administrative procedure.

But the…crowd had other ideas. For 3hrs, they told stories of a primary gone wrong. Some raised concerns about small bureaucratic errors, like improperly addressed ballots. Others shared more exotic allegations, incl’g an unsubstantiated rumor circulating on #X about a Serbian scheme to manipulate voting machines.

The stories did not add up to any clear theory…, but the community had come to believe that #democracy was threatened & that there was only one way to save it: They wanted Andriola to #vote w/her 2 #Republican colleagues to deny her own victory.

Andriola took her #legal duty to #certify #elections seriously, & the stakes of her decision reached…beyond #Nevada. Like thousands of admins around the country, #WashoeCounty commissioners are charged w/certifying elections…

And Washoe wasn’t just any county. It was a swing district in a swing state.

For that reason, Andriola’s hyperlocal primary had taken on national importance. Washoe County’s longest-serving commissioner, Jeanne Herman, was one of the first & only local commission members in the country to vote against #certifying #Biden’s win in 2020, “because the election was improper,’’ she told me. She was outvoted at the time by the 4 other commissioners.

But in 2022, a local #cryptocurrency #multimillionaire named #RobertBeadles & a growing movement of #election denialists helped elect a second commissioner who expressed doubt about the 2020 results, Mike Clark. With one more like-minded Republican commissioner, the doubters would have a 3-vote majority.

Andriola had touted her support of #Trump in her campaign ads, but she also said that elections “should not be a partisan issue.”

She won the primary by a comfortable margin against several #election-denying challengers, & her victory was affirmed even after Beadles financed a recount. (Technically the July 9 meeting was for a second #certification, of the recount.)

But now, at the hearing, #RobertBeadles himself presented an analysis of the ballot data that described the election outcome as a “13.4 sigma” event — so unlikely as to be virtually impossible w/o some kind of interference.

The analysis came from a Long Island math enthusiast named #EdwardSolomon, who made a similar — & widely #debunked — argument in 2020 to support claims that Biden stole the race. But to #RobertBeadles it merited careful consideration. “I’ve given you guys enough evidence right there that you guys should hit pause,” Beadles said. “Do your duty.”

The commissioners’ duty to #certify, though, was entirely “ministerial” — #election #certification was not an endorsement of the process or the outcome, merely another step in passing the results up through the system. They were legally obligated to certify even if they did see problems. They could note clerical errors—the rules vary from state to state—but once they noted them, they still had to pass the results up the line. This was just the basic admin work of running a #democracy.

The job of explaining these duties to the board fell to Nathan Edwards, a lawyer from the Washoe DA’s office. “You are canvassing the vote today,” he began, using the formal term for reviewing the #election process. But then he began to interpret the #statutory language in way that surprised Andriola. “There’s been a lot of talk about whether this is ‘ministerial’ or ‘not ministerial,’” he said. But the state #law contained elements of both:

The board had a duty to review the information, but its members also had a duty to decide what the *true* results of the #election were. He underlined this *interpretation* emphatically. “You don’t have to vote yes on that, you don’t have to vote no,” he said. “You vote your conscience.”

Now Andriola was uncertain. This didn’t seem right.
#law #ElectionLaw #VotingRights #VoterSuppression #ElectionInterference #ElectionSubversion #BigLie #MediaLiteracy #Propaganda #MAGA #VoteBlue #HarrisWalz2024

Was Edwards saying that she did have an obligation to consider the evidence before her? Maybe this was different because it was a recount? She had questions. What would happen next if the motion didn’t carry?
Edwards gave a wry laugh. He had done some asking around, he said, but “it’s a little bit of uncharted water.” Probably the matter would end up in front of the secretary of state or a judge.
#law #ElectionLaw #ElectionInterference #BigLie #MediaLiteracy #Propaganda #VoteBlue #HarrisWalz2024

“I don’t have time to figure out if this is right or this is wrong,” Andriola remembers thinking at the time. Maybe it was best to “let it go to people who have the authority, jurisdiction & time to do it right.”

And so she voted no. As far as anyone could determine, it was the first time since #Nevada became a state in 1864 that a county there had refused to #certify an #election.

The Washoe County case, w/an ofcl voting essentially to block her own #election, is the most vivid example of an effort that has been unfolding across the country…since the #Jan6 #insurrection. Now, as voters & campaign pros prepare for what promises to be a hard-fought election, a smaller group of #lawyers & longtime #MAGA supporters is preparing the ground for an even harder-fought post-election rematch. And as they did in 2020, they are preparing to battle on the grounds of #certification.

To better understand what this could mean for the country & for #democracy in the months to come, I traveled to 4 battleground states & interviewed dozens of #election officials, activists, lawyers & ordinary citizens, read through hundreds of pages of court transcripts & sat in on many hours of local meetings like the one in Washoe.