On the day they gathered to certify results of the November municipal election last year, three members of the Spalding County Board of Elections and Registration met in the elections office, an hour south of Atlanta, to look over the results. 

Normally a routine matter, the vote on certification that day became anything but — part of a phenomenon happening across the country in recent years, as local election officials have gone rogue and refused to certify election results, largely based on Donald Trump’s constant lies about widespread election fraud. 

One of the Spalding County election board members, Roy McClain, publicly voted against certification of results — a notable act in itself. Curiously, though, McClain quietly signed an official government document approving the very same results that he publicly refused to certify. 

It’s a bizarre wrinkle in the mounting drama over election certification. While certification has historically been a “ministerial” task — not a discretionary one — states around the country have seen a wave of refusals as Trump’s lies about 2020 have consumed the Republican Party down to the local level. Nearly 70 election deniers in six swing states are now working as local election officials, Rolling Stone and American Doom previously found. 

The certification issue has come into greater focus in Georgia, after the new MAGA majority on the State Election Board recently passed two rules giving local election officials like McClain more power to arbitrarily deny certification, based on belief in or allegations of election fraud. As the 2024 election approaches, local officials refusing to certify results appears to be a key strategy for the Trump campaign and his allies, and it could help delay the results of the election or buttress the former president’s effort to challenge another loss.  

On Nov. 14, 2023, the day McClain voted against certification, he claimed that he needed more time to hand count results. The board had implemented automatic hand recounts of all elections but McClain wanted more time to compare his hand count with results from voting machines.  The board was still able to certify the results, with a Republican and Democrat voting in favor. 

But McClain’s “no” vote was merely for show: At some point that same day, McClain signed a document called a “Certification of Returns,” officially approving the results of the election even though he had publicly voted against it. While votes at public meetings like McClain’s are the acts that get reported in the press, in Georgia, the Certification of Results is what officially approves those results. Election board members sign the document, and it’s then sent to the secretary of state.

“We, the undersigned Board of Elections/Registrars, Superintendent/Supervisor of Elections and designees, do jointly and severally certify that the attached Election Results Summary is a true and correct count of the votes cast in this County for the candidates in the General Election,” the Certification of Returns document states.

Underneath the statement — Roy McClain’s signature.

McClain’s “no” vote on certification was reported by multiple media outlets, and became one of dozens of examples of rogue local election officials refusing to do what Democrats and election experts contend is a purely ministerial duty — certifying election results. But McClain nor Spalding County appears to have attempted to correct public reporting about his “no” vote and his ensuing approval of election results. 

In response to questions about McClain’s contradictory actions, Spalding County election supervisor Kim Slaughter says that although McClain “voted against certifying the election at the time the vote was taken, the election was certified with a majority of the votes cast and therefore, all board members signed the certification documents.”

In other counties, instances of certification refusal have played out differently. Certification of Returns forms show that election board members in Gwinnett and DeKalb counties who voted against certification did not sign the documents. Their public vote lines up with their official act, in other words.

So why did McClain publicly vote against certification only to privately approve it that same day? Slaughter says nothing was hidden from the public because the Certification of Returns was physically displayed at the Spalding County elections office in the small town of Griffin. 

Others wonder whether McClain was trying to appease powerful election denier factions of the Georgia Republican Party while simultaneously shielding himself from legal liability. Election officials who fail to certify results by statutory deadlines can face fines and even jail time for their actions.

“It’s performative — they’re playing to their base,” Jim O’Brien, a Democratic member of the Spalding County election board, tells Rolling Stone and American Doom.

Cathy Woolard, a former Democratic member of the Fulton County election board, says McClain may have been concerned about legal action, so he “did something symbolic and then complied with the law.”

While McClain appears to have complied with Georgia law requiring county election officials to certify results, an election board member could theoretically do the opposite: publicly vote for certification and then refuse to sign the Certification of Returns. One expert suggested such a move would come with legal risk. 

“I suspect there would be a real danger for anyone who votes to certify an election but then refuses to sign off on the official documentation,” says Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University. “To me, that would constitute a potential criminal election interference if a majority of a board refused to sign off.” 

The revelations about McClain’s contradictory actions have not been previously reported, and were discovered in emails obtained by Rolling Stone and American Doom. They’re the latest oddity to come from Spalding County, where the elections office has become a hotbed of denier activity since 2020. Starting with a state law that allowed for a Republican takeover of the board in 2021, the election board has become a proving ground for what elections administration looks like under the authority of election conspiracists. 

The board’s chair is a QAnon adherent and voting machine conspiracy theorist who once attended a screening of the debunked election conspiracy documentary 2,000 Mules with McClain. The county’s election supervisor got sucked into false claims on election night in 2020 that election workers had discarded ballots for Trump in a dumpster. Then, as Joe Biden’s inauguration approached, the election deniers in Spalding County discussed illegally accessing election equipment with an Atlanta IT firm that had helped the Trump campaign break into voting machines elsewhere in Georgia.

Now, there’s McClain’s bizarre certification contradiction. The emails obtained by Rolling Stone and American Doom show McClain privately disputing a recent report from a watchdog group that mentioned his “no” vote on certification. McClain wrote to his colleagues that “lies” are being told, and attached a copy of the Certification of Returns document that he had signed.

If McClain was trying to correct the record about his “no” vote, his actions following the November 2023 election are even more curious.

Following his public refusal to certify the results of the election, McClain received a letter from a lawyer representing the Democratic Party of Georgia. The letter — which was sent to two other counties whose Republican election board members refused to certify results — admonished McClain for his actions, saying they were “improper regardless of any purported justification given.” The letter was sent on January 3 to Spalding, DeKalb, and Cobb counties. 

A month later, at a meeting of the Spalding County election board, McClain addressed the letter, saying he felt that Democrats were trying to “intimidate” him.

“I think everybody here knows that if you’re going to try to bully or intimidate somebody, I’m probably not the good candidate for that (sic),” McClain said. “So, I’ll take it for information, but I’m not going to put up with it, and if I feel that my oath says I have to do something, that’s what I’ll do, regardless of someone’s interpretation of what they think might’ve been in the law.”

At no point did McClain publicly clarify that he had privately certified the results of the November 2023 election. Further, Democrats and election experts contend that the law is clear: Certification is a mandatory duty, based on 100 years of precedent established by Georgia court cases.

McClain is not the only local election official who complained about the letter from Democrats. The day after the letter was sent to Spalding, DeKalb, and Cobb counties, David Hancock, an election denier who serves on the Gwinnett County elections board — and who coordinated with a pro-Trump member of the State Election Board on its new, controversial certification rules — forwarded the letter to a well-known election denial activist. Hancock apparently received the letter from fellow election officials in Cobb County, according to emails obtained by Rolling Stone and American Doom.

“When you have a moment, I would really appreciate your opinion on this incredible letter from an attorney for the Democratic Party of Georgia regarding voting to certify an election,” Hancock wrote to Garland Favorito, an “election integrity” activist who is one of the state’s most prominent election deniers, and who has pressured the State Election Board to investigate unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud and implement rules based on his conspiratorial beliefs. “I don’t see how this stands — if the [county board of elections] has no choice but to certify an election, then why require them to vote to certify the election?”

The answer, say Democrats and election experts, is that certification is a ceremonial task — part of what Democratic lawyer Marc Elias calls “the pageantry of democracy.” Other avenues exist for candidates and parties to investigate irregularities and claims of fraud, from lawsuits to recounts and audits, but the act of certification — carried out by political appointees on county election boards like McClain and Hancock — are not the proper venue to investigate those claims, Georgia courts have ruled. 

Still, McClain, Hancock, and a handful of other county election board members throughout Georgia have used certification as an opportunity to make their own claims about fraud. Their actions are part of a broader pattern of pro-Trump local election officials across the country holding up certification based on bogus accusations of widespread voter fraud. 

Since 2020, 35 local election officials have delayed or attempted to deny certification in eight states, according to a report last month from the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Since November, when McClain and election board members in DeKalb and Cobb counties voted against certification, county election board members in Georgia have refused to certify election results three times. The first came in March, when Hancock voted against certifying results of the 2024 presidential primary. He was joined by his fellow Gwinnett County election board member, Alice O’Lenick, also a Republican. In May, Fulton County’s Julie Adams abstained from voting to certify results of this year’s primary elections for state and local races. 

She then sued with the help of lawyers from the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, demanding the power to refuse to certify results if Fulton County doesn’t provide a lengthy list of documents and materials for her to review prior to certification. That lawsuit is pending.

Since then, Adams has gone on to join the push for rules that give more  to county election officials to refuse to certify results. Adams and other election denial activists have successfully convinced the State Election Board to pass those rules. In June, Adams again abstained from certifying the results of a local runoff election. 

Certification is shaping up to be one of the most important tactics of a Trump campaign that is hyper-focused on questioning the results of November’s election. Trump has signaled that he’ll refuse to accept any result that doesn’t show him winning, and he has local election officials, state politicians, and, of course, members of Congress to back up these claims.  

The question is becoming whether the system can hold when Trump challenges the election results this year — and whether local election officials like McClain will continue complying with the law and certifying results, even if they won’t say so publicly.

This story is being published in partnership with American Doom, a newsletter that focuses on right-wing extremism and other threats to democracy.