While most election officials and the media have dismissed or downplayed allegations of ballot fraud in November's elections, there are a few who share the same sort of skepticism about claimed election integrity as a substantial portion of the general public.

Indeed, a handful of county-level election officials in both California and Colorado have signaled their concerns about the integrity of electoral procedures during the certification processes for last month's results, Just the News reported.

However, the moves of those officials were largely symbolic and did little to stop the eventual certification of the results.

California county's election results certified "under duress"

The Shasta Scout reported last week that three members of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors voted to certify their California county's election results "under duress," suggesting that they'd been forced to do so against their will.

That move followed a recent board meeting in which angry members of the community sharply criticized the board for not doing enough to address their concerns about the integrity and security of the county's electoral processes.

A debate ensued as some members sought to placate the crowd, with members Patrick Jones and Chris Kelstrom joining Chairman Kevin Crye in noting that they'd certified the results "under duress," while the board's other two members, Supervisors Garman and Rickert, explicitly noted that they were not "under duress" when they certified the election results, even as it was acknowledged by all that the term carried no legal weight.

The outlet further noted that the board also voted to approve two letters to the Justice Department that outlined their election integrity concerns, with Crye striking an optimistic tone during the meeting that the incoming DOJ under President-elect Donald Trump would likely be more amenable to addressing those concerns than the current DOJ under President Joe Biden.

A major issue covered in those letters was the reported duplication of thousands of ballots because of an ink overspray during the printing process and concerns that all of the ballots in question, the oversprayed originals and the reprinted duplicates, had been filled out by voters and counted as legitimate.

Colorado canvassers symbolically vote against certification of election results

Meanwhile, just a week earlier, a handful of election officials in seven different counties in Colorado also waged their own symbolic protest against questionable election results by voting against certification, according to Colorado Newsline.

However, those canvass board members in Archuleta, Boulder, Eagle, El Paso, Gilpin, Jefferson, and Larimer counties who voted against certification were outnumbered by other members and the county clerks, who proceeded to certify the disputed results.

The main issue for those members who opposed certification was the apparent leak months earlier by Secretary of State Jena Griswold's office of passwords for election equipment, which raised legitimate concerns about the integrity of the voting and tabulation machines.

"If ever we were going to decertify an election, this would be the time to do it," Republican El Paso County canvass board member Candice Stutzriem said during a conference call last week. "We have been served up the best reason we’re going to see in our lifetime with this BIOS breach."

All irregularities must be thoroughly investigated

Of course, Griswold and her allies in the Democratic Party and the media had steadfastly downplayed any possible risks posed by the passwords that had inadvertently been made publicly available online for months before the elections and insisted that the equipment could be trusted to deliver accurate results.

Yet, in an October interview with Just the News, Honest Elections Project Executive Director Jason Snead told the outlet of expected electoral issues, "If there's evidence of something untoward that happened, it needs to be investigated," and that the "worst thing to happen in that case is saying all concerns of election integrity are illegitimate, take away all the power to investigate, and sweep the issues under the rug."