In the days and weeks after the 2020 election, partisans across the country used lies and deceit to seize the White House.
Joe Biden had a wide lead in the race, but 84 fake electors signed a statement certifying that Donald Trump won seven battleground states.
He didn’t.
That number accounted for nearly a third of the number needed to elect the president, more than enough to reverse Biden’s victory and give Trump a second term.
For some, it’s old (and eagerly buried) news.
The events that culminated in trying to stop Biden from taking office as president happened six months ago, and shovelers might say they’re still as relevant as the events you see in some stores today. Moreover, in 2024, Trump was supported by a plurality of voters.
But if you believe that this has an expiry date, that if enough time passes, cheating will be okay, and that our country and its fundamental democratic values only matter to the extent that they help the political side of your country win in the first place, then that’s just old news.
Again, “what we’re talking about here is an attempt to…” said Sean Morales Doyle, director of the Voting Rights and Elections Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy think tank at New York University. “If people can engage in such conduct without consequences or responsibility, we should be concerned that it will happen again.”
That is why punishment and deterrence are so important.
Last week, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled against six Republicans who signed false certifications saying Trump had won the state’s electors. Those indicted include Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald and Republican National Committee state representative Jim Degraffenreid.
The decision focused on the procedural question of whether the charges should have been filed in Douglas County, where the signing of the forged certificate took place in the state capital, Carson City, or in Clark County, where the forged certificate was filed in court in Las Vegas. A lower court ruled that the charges should have been filed in Douglas County. The High Court overturned the judgment and allowed the prosecution on the forgery charges to proceed.
It should be as well. Let the jury decide.
Of course, the Nevada Six and other bogus electors are nothing more than small fry. Donald Trump, the mastermind behind the attempted theft, “found 11,780 votes” and escaped responsibility by winning the 2024 election.
This month, and others involved in attempted election theft, including possible federal crimes. This move was purely symbolic. President Trump’s pardon power does not extend to cases filed in state courts.
But it was further evidence of his repeated contempt for the rule of law. (Just hours after taking office, President Trump was involved in the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, where some brutalized police officers with pepper spray and wooden and metal poles).
Efforts across the country to prosecute low-level conspirators, fraudsters, and even those who rigged the 2020 election have yielded mixed results.
In Michigan, a criminal case against 15 fake electors ruled that the government had failed to present sufficient evidence of intent to commit fraud.
In Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania, fake electors escaped prosecution because their certifications included warnings. The documents are said to have been submitted if the person was recognized as a legitimate elector. The issue became moot after President Trump lost the fight to overturn the election results, but some Trump supporters hoped the fake certificates would lead to pressure on Pence.
Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, has squinted at many of the lawsuits brought by prosecutors, suggesting that the issue may be better litigated at the ballot box rather than in court.
“There’s a fine line between what is offensive behavior and what is criminal behavior,” Muller said. “There’s no easy answer to what things should or shouldn’t be prosecuted at any given moment, other than whether it’s new or not. If you’re going to prosecute people who take part in political protests like this, it’s very important that you have a pretty ironclad legal theory.”
Other cases are also polished.
Wisconsin is scheduled to have three fake electors next month. Fourteen defendants, including Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, have been indicted in Georgia. , the state attorney general must decide this week whether to move forward with the case against the 11 people after a judge dismissed the charges because of the way the case was presented to a grand jury.
Justice is far from certain and swift. But that’s no reason to give up.
The penalty for plane hijacking is a minimum of 20 years in federal prison. That seems like too much for fake electors.
But dozens of bad actors tried to hijack the election. They should not be let off the hook.
