2024 brings back fake electors for Donald Trump, even some facing charges for 2020
Fourteen so-called fake electors who participated in former President Donald Trump’s 2020 scheme to throw the election results into chaos will once again serve as electors for Trump in 2024, including several who currently face criminal charges.
With input from the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, Republican state parties in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada have renominated 14 of the 84 fake electors from the 2020 election. Wisconsin's electors aren't publicly available until the first week of October, according to state election officials. A legal settlement bars unauthorized Wisconsin 2020 electors from serving as electors for Trump again.
There are no repeat electors from 2020 on this year’s Republican slates for Arizona and Georgia, the other two states where fake electors signed certificates incorrectly declaring Trump the winner.
The 14 former fake electors who are serving again include the Nevada Republican Party chairman, the Republican National Committeeman from Pennsylvania and several current or former county chairs.
"Politically or in terms of the health of our democracy, the idea that people who potentially committed a crime in trying to further a scheme to subvert the results of the 2020 election... the idea that they are in any way involved in politics is troubling," Director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law Rick Hasen said.
While some may have acted with the belief that they were just a back up if there was a legal change to the outcome, Hasen noted, "some of them, there have at least been allegations that they knew what they were doing and they knowingly engaged in criminal conduct."
None of the 14 repeat electors responded to USA TODAY's attempts to contact them.
The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump is facing four felony charges in Washington, D.C. related to leading conspiracies to reverse the 2020 results and disenfranchise millions of voters. He has refused to commit to unconditionally accepting the results of the upcoming 2024 election, and while he has sometimes acknowledged that he lost the 2020 race, he has also continued to falsely tell supporters that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him.
Pending charges
Charges have been brought against the fake electors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada, as well as some people working with Trump.
Some of the cases are moving very slowly. In August, a Maricopa County judge set a tentative trial date of Jan. 5, 2026, for Arizona's fake electors case. The state GOP did not renominate any of the 2020 electors. In Nevada, the state has appealed to the state supreme court a lower court decision to reject the fake electors case stating it had been filed in the wrong county.
More: ‘Somewhat dicey' and ‘problematic’: Inside Trump's bid to have fake electors overturn 2020 election
Still, electors might think twice about being party to signing such certificates again, Hasen said.
"Anyone who's an elector who's asked to do something shady this time, might think, hmm, last time around, these people were indicted, so maybe I shouldn't do that," Hasen said.
Michigan
The Michigan Republican Party has renominated the most fake electors. Six names that appeared on a certificate falsely claiming that Trump had won the state are on the 2024 list of 15 electors provided by the Michigan Secretary of State's office: Amy Facchinello, John Haggard, Timothy King, Marian Sheridan, Hank Choate and Meshawn Maddock–a former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party.
Trump lost Michigan in 2020 by about 154,000 votes.
All six of them face criminal charges. The trial has not yet been scheduled but isn't expected to begin this year.
Choate's attorney, David Kallman, said the pending 2020 charges shouldn't affect who is picked to be a 2024 elector. Choate has pleaded not guilty.
"This was another election year. This really has nothing to do with the last 2020, election," he said. "I don't think it really impacts the criminal case at all."
Kallman said that Choate didn't know he was doing anything wrong in 2020. He said Trump's attorney's told the electors that the certificate would only be used if Trump's campaign won a court case overturning the results of the election in Michigan or if the state legislature stepped in.
"My client was told by people he trusted, attorneys at this meeting, that this wasn't going to be used unless one of those things happened," Kallman said.
He said electors were only presented with the page to sign their names, not the page that falsely claimed that they voted in the Capitol building and that Trump won.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Republicans submitted a list of presidential electors to the secretary of state’s office with five former fake electors: Bill Bachenberg, Bernadette Comfort, Ash Khare, Pat Poprik and Andy Reilly. The state has 19 electoral votes. Trump lost in 2020 by about 80,000 votes.
Reilly, an attorney, is also the Republican National Committeeman from Pennsylvania.
The Pennsylvania electors wouldn't sign the fake certificate in 2020 unless the forms specifically said that their votes weren't to be counted until the courts ruled in Trump's favor. Therefore, electors have not been charged with a crime.
Khare, who has been an elector since 1990, told USA TODAY in April that he advocated to include that clause.
"We wanted to make sure that we’re not doing anything illegal," he said.
Nevada
The Nevada Republican Party renominated Michael McDonald, the chair of the state party, and Jesse Law, chairman of the Republican party of Clark County, both of whom signed the 2020 certificate although Trump lost the state by 154,000 votes. The state has six electoral votes.
McDonald, a longtime friend of Trump's who is senior adviser to the 2024 Trump campaign, and Law were among the electors indicted in Nevada. The case, which was dismissed over questions of whether it was filed in the correct county, has been appealed by Secretary of State Aaron Ford, a Democrat, to the state Supreme Court.
Trump lost Nevada by more than 30,000 votes.
New Mexico
The New Mexico Republican Party renominated Deborah Weh Maestas, the former state party chair. The state has five electoral votes. It's role in the scheme was always considered an outlier. New Mexico is not a swing state and has supported Democrats in every presidential election since 2008. Trump lost there in 2020 but about 100,000 votes.
Like in Pennsylvania, the 2020 New Mexico electors wouldn't sign unless the forms specifically said that their votes weren't to be counted until the courts ruled in Trump's favor. New Mexico electors have not been charged with a crime.
More: Wisconsin is the last state that may prosecute Trump’s fake electors, but AG Josh Kaul is mum
A key legal change since 2020
Electors normally draw little to no attention. In a presidential election year, each party nominates state electors who will vote for their presidential nominee in the Electoral College if their candidate wins. Party leaders such as the county party chairs or local elected officials are normally selected. Their names must be submitted to the state before the election and made publicly available.
But in 2020 GOP officials in seven states that President Joe Biden won sent fake electoral certificates to Congress stating that former President Donald Trump had actually won. The certificates were an effort to baselessly convince lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence that there were substantial questions about the outcome of the election in swing states.
The House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and Trump's efforts to stay in power after losing the election found that the fake electoral certificates were part of a coordinated effort by Trump's allies to block Congress from certifying the election results. They wanted Congress to return th
Pence refused to accept, or even consider, the "alternate" electoral slates.
Jonathan Diaz, Director of Voting Advocacy for advocacy group Campaign Legal Center, said it is unlikely that scheme would be successful again. In 2022, Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform Act, which changed the rules so Congress can only count electoral certificates signed by the governor of the state or another official approved by state law when the House and Senate meet to count the votes on Jan. 6. It also raised the threshold for members of Congress to object to counting a state from one representative and one senator to one-fifth of each chamber. Also, in 2023 the Supreme Court ruled in Moore v. Harper that state legislatures have little power to overturn election results.
"It's really going to be much, much more difficult for a slate of fake electors to try the same kind of shenanigans that they did in 2020," Diaz said. "The [2022 law] was really targeted at plugging the holes that existed in the previous process, because the law was so old, and really making sure that the kind of effort that we saw focused on that joint session of Congress can't occur again."
USA TODAY reporter Erin Mansfield contributed to this article
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 14 fake electors from 2020 are Donald Trump electors again in 2024
