ATLANTA – Local officials are starting to certify this year’s results presidential elections in a process that has so far gone quietly, in stark contrast to the tumultuous certification period four years ago that followed the loss of then-President Donald Trump.

Georgia is the first of the presidential battleground states to begin certification, with local election boards scheduled to vote throughout 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 other six presidential battleground states, after losing six of them to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. County certification hearings are scheduled later in the week in several other swing states — Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

The lack of confirmation drama so far this week is a throwback to how the routine process worked before Trump lost his re-election bid four years ago. As he then sought to subvert the will of the voters, he and his allies pressure on Republican members of the certification boards in Michigan to delay or stop the process. They searched too delay in certifications in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

Ultimately, the boards voted to certify, but Trump focused on certification caught among the Republicans. Some local Republican officials have refused to certify election results since then, raising the concern of a wider movement to deny certification this year, Trump would have 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 a purely ministerial obligation.”

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

An attorney for the county, which includes largely Democratic Atlanta, explained during the meeting that certification is a necessary step before any election challenge can proceed. The Fulton County Board of Elections was scheduled to hold the certification vote later Tuesday.

Unlike Trump four years ago, Harris acknowledged her loss and admitted. Trump also won the popular vote for the first time during his three runs for the White House and praised the election results. Instead of angrily descending on the county counting centers, his supporters rejoiced.

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

That doesn’t mean everyone is happy. Conspiracy theories surrounding this year’s election are circulating in both parties.

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

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

The claims did not take into account the fact that tabulation would take several daysincluding Arizona and California, the nation’s most populous state. As the votes continue to be counted this week, Harris has made ground and now he has almost 72 million votesa number that will continue to grow.

Counties and other local jurisdictions across the country will be conducting post-election vote audits over the next several weeks. These usually involve manually counting a certain number of ballots and comparing the results to automated tallies to ensure accuracy.

Before local results are certified, the top election official usually provides the vote totals for each candidate in each race, along with how many electors voted and how many votes were cast. Any discrepancies are reported and explained.

“The whole purpose of this period is to find these types of errors,” said Kim Wyman, Washington state’s former top election official. “They make sure that the results were fair, that the elections were fair.”

Every state will go through this process, including the presidential battlegrounds.

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

Pennsylvania counties have until Nov. 25 to certify. Some larger counties were still reviewing and counting provisional ballots Tuesday, the deadline for them to report unofficial results to the state. The litigation was possible with a U.S. Senate race approaching the threshold for automatic statewide recounts.

Boards of canvassers in Michigan’s 83 counties have until Nov. 19 to review local results before submitting them to the state Board of Canvassers. The four-member board, made up of two Democrats and two Republicans, is scheduled to certify the results by Nov. 25.

In Wisconsin, counties began the research process Tuesday and have until Nov. 19 to certify. The Wisconsin Board of Elections will review the county reports, and the chairman — currently a Democrat — will certify the results by Dec. 1.

The biggest potential problem in the state was identified on election day and corrected. The vote tabulation machines used for mail-in ballots in Milwaukee were not properly sealed. A bipartisan decision was made to begin the vote counting process once the issue was resolved.

The state’s nonpartisan top elections administrator, Meagan Wolfe, said the election was a success without major issues. She attributed this to years of training and preparation by local election workers.

“Well-run elections don’t happen by accident,” she said.

___

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