In June 2022, the county commissioners of Otero County, New Mexico refused to certify the results of the state’s primary election. They expressed generalized concerns, without evidence, about the election and wanted to investigate irregularities in the results.

Their action threatened to undermine the entire statewide election in which hundreds of thousands of voters cast ballots. And many worried that state or local election officials around the United States could undermine other elections, including congressional or presidential elections, by refusing to certify results.

The certification of election results should be a sleepy thing. It is a simple step that formally indicates who won an election. But it has come to stand for something much more in recent elections, as a stand-in for whether an election was honestly conducted. Understanding the steps that come before certification can help voters recognize why certification serves a different, and simpler, goal.

As explained below, Otero County would ultimately certify its results days after this refusal. That’s because there are ample safeguards in our legal system to ensure election results are certified in a timely fashion.

What happens after Election Day

While the terminology and the precise sequence of events may vary from state to state, the process looks pretty much the same everywhere. On election night, election precincts close and local election officials tabulate vote totals. Election officials confirm that the precinct results are the proper tabulation by counting the total ballots cast and verifying that it matches the totals on any election tabulation equipment. Sometimes this process happens at individual precincts, or sometimes at a central municipal or county facility.

Over the next few days is the canvass, which is largely an accounting exercise. Election officials reconcile the number of ballots against the number of voters who checked in to ensure the numbers match and, if they don’t, investigate the reason for any disparity. Election officials count provisional ballots that were properly cast and accept military and overseas ballots that may arrive after Election Day. They also may audit the results under state law, such as a hand count of a few precincts to spot check results.

Those totals are eventually submitted to an election board or chief election official. The responsible party adds up the totals and certifies the statewide results. The governor or secretary of state signs certifications of election for the winners. For congressional races, that certificate goes to the House or to the Senate.

Some recounts or election contests happen before certification, and others might happen after. Certification can be provisional and change if a contest alters the outcome.

But by the time certification happens, the substantive work of verifying the accuracy of election results is mostly done. Voting machine tabulation equipment has been tested by other officials earlier in the process. The verification of the information on absentee ballot envelopes happened during processing of ballots and the canvass.

Not every election official gets to revisit every earlier decision. That is part of the design of election administration.

A ministerial duty

The law recognizes that the act of certifying an election is a “ministerial” duty. That legal term is a technical one. It simply acknowledges that election officials have no discretion when they certify election results.

I have previously made the analogy that certification is something like an automotive worker at the end of an assembly line, affixing windshield wiper blades. While the worker might stop the line if the car arrives with three tires or no doors, the worker does not stop the production line to verify that the engine has been adequately assembled. That’s someone else’s job, and someone else is responsible for supervising that the job has been done.

Certifying officials do have limited discretion, in a bounded way. If a state has 99 counties but the certifying officials only receive results from 98 of them, they could pause while they secure the last county’s results. Or if a tabulation sheet from one county showed zero votes cast, the certifying officials might pause to investigate the error.

These narrow exceptions are fixed by state law and may vary, but they are exceptions limited to obvious defects on the face of the returns. Certifying officials need to have all the results from a state before finalizing the results. But they are not responsible for reexamining all the things that other officials have done in the weeks leading up to that moment.

Doing too much

A desire for reexamining results is precisely what went wrong in Otero County, New Mexico, in 2022. County commissioners were supposed to certify the results of a primary election. But they expressed generalized concern about the results and refused to certify the results under the hope of some further investigation.

But the county commission was not exercising the discretion it actually had. It wanted to revisit decisions that had been made at earlier stages by other officials. As a result, litigation ensued. The New Mexico Supreme Court swiftly issued an order to certify the results because the commissioners had no discretion. And the commission ultimately certified the results. Even if it hadn’t, a court could have ordered someone else to certify the results, and it would have been treated as if the commission had done so.

Some states have been making this explicit in recent years. Michigan’s constitution now describes certification as a “ministerial, clerical, nondiscretionary duty.” Georgia courts found that a state election board rule that would have invited certifying officials to pause for an undefined inquiry into results violated state law.

In short, certification does a narrow thing, and courts have routinely affirmed that it is a narrow thing. Recent efforts to try to expand the role of certification into an investigation into the results of an election have failed.

Certification deadlines

The deadline for certification is fixed by law in each state, and most have unusually clear deadlines. Nevada, for instance, puts the deadline at the fourth Tuesday in November. Counties in Pennsylvania must certify results by the third Monday after an election.

And if election officials miss the deadline—or communicate their unmistakable intent to miss the deadline—state courts can readily intervene, as happened in New Mexico in 2022.

Occasionally, states have delayed certifying results. In 2000, the Florida Supreme Court infamously ruled that certification needed to be postponed until legal issues could be resolved in that case. In 2009, the Minnesota Supreme Court refused to certify the winner of a U.S. Senate race as a contest lingered. In 2025, the North Carolina Supreme Court delayed certification of a contested supreme court election over concerns that certification would moot the pending election contest.

Delayed certification can sometimes be the result of ambiguity or weakness in state law. In Minnesota, for instance, state law prohibited the governor from issuing a certificate of election while a contest was pending, and the state legislature has since amended the law.

In other circumstances, if a state court creates the delay, a federal court might intervene to press certification forward, as ultimately happened in North Carolina. In Florida, because it was a federal election, federal deadlines pressed upon the litigation to wind up in an expedient manner.

Some races may take longer to resolve than others, and sometimes certification is delayed in rare circumstances. But there are legal mechanisms for courts to resolve disputes expeditiously and for federal courts to intervene if appropriate.

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In short, certification plays an important but discrete role in election administration. It is rarely disputed, as it should be. Even when it is disputed, if election officials do so in bad faith—a rarity—other legal devices help conclude the dispute expeditiously.