# Certificate of Ascertainment The **certificate of ascertainment** is the document by which a state's executive — the governor, unless state law designated another official *before* Election Day — formally identifies the presidential electors the state appointed, and the vote totals behind them. It is signed under the state seal and transmitted to the Archivist of the United States, with duplicate originals delivered to the electors themselves. The [[Electoral Count Reform Act]] made this instrument the load-bearing document of the entire count. Under the reformed statute the executive must issue it **no later than six days before the electors meet**, it must be issued "under and in pursuance of" state law enacted *prior to* Election Day, and Congress must treat a certificate that satisfies those conditions as **conclusive**. There is one lawful certificate per state — the theory that Congress may choose between competing slates is what the reform was written to foreclose. See [[Electoral College Process Flow]]. This is a stub — expand with the 2020 fake-slate certificates, the National Archives' handling of them, and the state-by-state implementation of the ECRA's executive-designation rule. ## See Also - [[Electoral College Process Flow]] - [[Certificate of Vote]] - [[Safe Harbor Deadline]] - [[Electoral Count Reform Act]] - [[Fake Electors Scheme]]