‘The law is clear’: US states signal willingness to prosecute election crimes

Some US states are sending strong signals to county and local officials who might be tempted to intervene illegally in the 5 November election or refuse to certify results: fail to do your duty and risk criminal charges or hefty financial penalties.

In at least five of the seven battleground states that could determine whether the next US president is Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump, top election and law enforcement officials have investigated, indicted and even jailed officials who tried to interfere with the vote or delay certification of results, a necessary but largely ceremonial step.

County officials have also been warned that failing to certify results on time could force their local governments to foot the bill for unnecessary audits or recounts.

The increased oversight of local election officials is aimed at preventing unfounded claims of fraud from slowing the certification of election results, which in turn could interfere with Congress's certification of the presidential election results in a highly charged partisan atmosphere.

Four years after Trump tried to overturn his 2020 defeat, officials in the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as in solidly Democratic Colorado, said they have become far more adept at handling those who overstep their authority, even with Trump still repeating false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and that he will lose in November only through fraud.

States that fail to certify results by certain deadlines could be left out of the state-by-state electoral college process that formally determines the winners of US presidential elections.

"The law is clear and we won't tolerate anyone not following it for any reason," Michigan's secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, said in an interview. "There are times and places for challenging election results. The certification process is not one of them."