Election officials in battleground states have warned counties not to try to stop the certification of election results, amid fears that Trump supporters may try to disrupt the process.

Some states have warned that counties that do not certify election results, as they are required to do, could face legal action.

“If you fail to certify a county-level election, or fail to certify a canvass, you will be impeached,” said Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes. “On top of that, we’ve sent what I would call sternly worded letters to people to let them know.”

A recent report revealed that thousands of Trump supporters have received training on how pressure local election officials to refuse to certify the vote, led by law professor David Clements, who has been a leading defender of Trump’s election fraud allegations.

Clements reportedly held events attended by thousands of people, in at least 40 counties, in more than a dozen states, including the battlegrounds of Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, according to the Lawfare report .

news week reached out to the Trump campaign for comment via email.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson warned that legal filings have been prepared to sue any county that tries not to certify the election results.

“We have great attorneys that we’re working with in the attorney general’s office, who are also prepared, who were there in 2020 and ready to go,” he said.

“It’s more about making sure that we are able to respond quickly and that we are prepared to ensure that the law is followed.”

In Georgia, a state that was a major focus of Trump’s attention Voter fraud claims In 2020, officials made similar comments.

Gabriel Sterling, director of operations for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said at a briefing in September that “the courts will not allow” a county to stop the state and refuse to certify.

“With the system we have, with the lawyers we have, we have planned a lot of this,” he said.

The election certification process, which used to be a routine administrative task, has become politicized in recent years by Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud.

It has already been seen that this has its impacts at the county level. In 2022, officials in Cochise County, Arizona initially refused to certify the results of the midterm elections until a court order forced them to do so.

Similarly, Washoe County in Nevada rejected the official results of two primary election recounts earlier this year until the state took legal action.

Trump has already begun sowing the seeds of allegations of voter fraud, writing in Truth Social on October 31: “We Caught THEM MAKING BIG CHEATS in Pennsylvania.”

Trump’s complaints about the state have been exaggerations or misrepresentations of the truth and have been rejected by local election officials.