Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Friday, December 4th. I'm Naila Boodoo. Here's how we're making you smarter today.

President Trump wants to auction drilling rights in Alaska's Arctic Wildlife Refuge.

Plus, there's a new genealogy database dedicated to enslaved people and their stories.

But first, the test of our electoral system is today's one big thing.

All those and figures say hi.

Aye. All those opposed say a name? A. A. That was two weeks ago when the Wayne

County Board of canvassers in Michigan met to certify presidential election results and both

Republican members refused. A few hours later the Republicans

relented there was another vote in the certification happened. It wasn't just

these Republicans in Michigan. A Republican Secretary of State in Georgia,

a Republican county supervisor in Arizona, and Republican appointed judges in Pennsylvania

were among the state and local officials who ended up validating the

voters choice of Joe Biden over Donald Trump in the presidential election.

Noah Feldman is a constitutional law scholar at Harvard and host of the deep background

podcast from Pushkin. Noah, so we talked before the election about your

concerns about the democratic process. I wonder in the end, did it all come down to

these few people? Those officials mattered a lot

but it did come down to more than just them. Had they ultimately gone down the

Trump rabbit hole.

That alone would not have necessarily

caused the next steps that Trump was hoping for.

That would have taken a lot of people.

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