Certifying this year's presidential results begins quietly, in contrast to the 2020 election

ATLANTA (AP) — Local officials are beginning to certify the results of this year’s presidential election in a process that, so far, has been playing out quietly, in stark contrast to the tumultuous certification period four years ago that followed then-President Donald Trump’s loss.

Georgia is the first of the presidential battleground states to start certifying, with local election boards scheduled to vote throughout the day Tuesday. As several suburban Atlanta counties certified their results without controversy, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger hailed Georgia’s election as “free, fair and fast.”

Trump won Georgia and the six other presidential battleground states, after losing six of them to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. County certification meetings are scheduled later in the week in several other swing states — Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

The lack of certification drama so far this week is a return to how the typically routine process worked before Trump lost his bid for reelection four years ago. As he sought then to overturn the will of the voters, he and his allies pressured Republican members of certification boards in Michigan to delay or halt the process. They also sought to delay certifications in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

The boards ultimately voted to certify, but Trump’s focus on certification caught on among Republicans. Some local Republican officials have refused to certify results in elections since then, raising concerns of a wider movement to reject certification this year had Trump lost to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Some of that sentiment was present on Tuesday. Michael Heekin, a Republican member of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections said he disagreed that certifying election results “is purely a ministerial duty.”

“We should be the first line of defense, at least one of the lines of defense in examining the goodness and the accuracy of the election,” he said.

A lawyer for the county, which includes heavily Democratic Atlanta, explained during the meeting that certification was a necessary step before any election challenge could proceed. The Fulton County election board was scheduled to take its certification vote later Tuesday.

Unlike Trump four years ago, Harris acknowledged her loss and conceded. Trump also won the popular vote for the first time during his three runs for the White House and praised the election results. Rather than descending on county ballot counting centers in anger, his supporters have been jubilant.

“This time four years ago, I was getting nasty phone calls constantly in my office,” said Lisa Tollefson, the elections clerk in Rock County, Wisconsin. This year, she said, “it’s been very quiet.”

That’s not to say everyone is happy. Conspiracy theories surrounding this year’s election are circulating within both parties.

Following Election Day, left-wing conspiracy theories proliferated on TikTok, X and other social platforms as users questioned why Harris’ total vote count was around 60 million — about 20 million fewer votes than Biden received four years ago.

Some right-wing accounts twisted the narrative, falsely claiming the vote gap was instead proof that Biden’s 2020 tally must have included fake votes.

The claims didn’t consider the fact that tabulation would take several days, including in Arizona and California, the nation’s most populous state. As votes continue to be counted this week, Harris has made up ground and now has nearly 72 million votes, a number that will continue to grow.

Counties and other local jurisdictions across the country will be conducting post-election audits of the vote over the next few weeks. Those typically involve hand-counting a certain number of ballots and comparing the results to machine tallies to ensure accuracy.

Before local results are certified, the top election official typically provides the vote totals by candidate in each race along with how many voters cast ballots and how many total ballots were cast. Any discrepancies get reported and explained.

“The whole point of this period is to find those types of errors,” said Kim Wyman, the former top election official in Washington state. “They are making sure the results were accurate, that the election was accurate.”

Every state will be going through the process, including presidential battlegrounds.

In North Carolina, where election officials recovered quickly after Hurricane Helene devastated the western part of the state, election boards in all 100 counties were scheduled to meet Friday to certify results.

Pennsylvania counties have until Nov. 25 to certify. Some larger counties were still reviewing and counting provisional ballots on Tuesday, the deadline for them to report unofficial results to the state. Litigation was possible with a U.S. Senate race hovering near the threshold for an automatic statewide recount.

Michigan’s 83 county canvassing boards have until Nov. 19 to review local results before forwarding them to the Board of State Canvassers. The four-member board, comprised of two Democrats and two Republicans, is scheduled to certify the results by Nov. 25.

In Wisconsin, counties began the canvass process on Tuesday and have until Nov. 19 to certify. The Wisconsin Elections Commission will review the county reports and the chair — currently a Democrat — will certify the results by Dec. 1.

The biggest potential problem in the state was identified on Election Day and corrected. Vote-tabulating machines used for mail ballots in Milwaukee were not properly sealed. A bipartisan decision was made to start over the process of counting the ballots once the problem was addressed.

The state’s nonpartisan top election administrator, Meagan Wolfe, said the election had been a success with no major problems. She attributed that to years of training and preparations by local election workers.

“Well-run elections do not happen by accident,” she said.

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Swenson reported from New York. Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Gary D. Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina; Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan; and Christine Fernando in Chicago contributed to this report.