14 2020 Trump Voters Returning For 2024 ElectionExBulletin

Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald shakes hands with former President Donald Trump at a January event for Trump's re-election campaign in Las Vegas. McDonald is one of 14 presidential electors this year who are tied to the effort to reverse Trump's 2020 defeat. John Locher/AP

Show caption John Locher/AP

Fourteen presidential electors tied to the effort to overturn former President Donald Trump's 2020 defeat are currently returning to their states' Republican ticket to represent the Electoral College in the 2024 election.

Four years ago, so-called fake electors gathered in seven key states where Trump lost the popular vote to sign certificates that became part of a scheme by the former president and his allies to try to overturn the election results.

The return this year of some of those Republicans as potential electors confirmed in recent weeks by party statements to state election officials raises questions about what they will do if Trump loses again in their states. The Republican nominee, who faces four counts of directing conspiracies to overturn the 2020 results and disenfranchise millions of voters, has refused to commit to unconditionally accepting the results of the next election in 2024 while continuing to repeat the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Republican voters returning to the polls are:

Michigan: Amy Facchinello, Hank Choate, John Haggard, Marian Sheridan, Meshawn Maddock, Timothy KingNevada: Jesse Law, Michael McDonaldNew Mexico: Deborah MaestasPennsylvania: Andy Reilly, Ash Khare, Bernadette Comfort, Bill Bachenberg, Patricia Poprick

Political parties in Wisconsin, another state that had unauthorized Republican electors, are not scheduled to select their potential 2024 electors until October, and a legal agreement prohibits those unauthorized 2020 electors from supporting Trump again. And there are no repeat 2020 pro-Trump electors on Republican slates this year for Arizona and Georgia.

Many legal experts say changes to federal law governing the counting of electoral votes in Congress, as well as criminal and civil charges brought against some pro-Trump electors for what they did in 2020, are likely to deter them from taking part in similar efforts this year.

Some election observers, however, worry that voters involved in a campaign to overturn the election results will have another chance to represent one of the country's two major political parties in a key process for the transfer of power in American democracy.

Who are these pro-Trump voters returning to the polls?

Many of those returning pro-Trump voters are current or former Republican leaders at the state and local levels, including McDonald, the Nevada Republican Party chairman.

The decision about who gets to vote is made by political parties, and they’re usually loyal to their party, says Rebecca Green, an associate professor of election law at William & Mary Law School. You choose who you want to vote for the party’s candidate. That’s how our system works.

The Electoral College system was put to the test in 2020, however, when Republican electors in several states where Trump lost the popular vote sent fake certificates to Congress claiming that Trump had won their state's electoral votes, which determine the winner of presidential elections.

Criminal charges have been brought against electors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada by Democratic-led prosecutors' offices, although a Nevada state judge dismissed an indictment against six Republican electors in June, saying the state had chosen the wrong venue for the case.

John Haggard, a pro-Trump returning voter in Michigan who faces eight counts of filing a false certificate in 2020, gives a thumbs-up after the state's governor announced all of Michigan's electoral votes for Trump in 2016 in Lansing, Michigan. Carlos Osorio/AP .

Show caption Carlos Osorio/AP

Most pro-Trump voters back home either did not respond to NPR's multiple requests for comment or declined to comment.

David Kallman is the attorney for one of Michigan’s 2020 pro-Trump electors, Choate, who is returning in 2024 as a potential Republican elector as he faces eight charges, including conspiracy to commit forgery. Choate and other accused Republican electors have pleaded not guilty, and Kallman says they relied on legal advice from Republican attorneys when they signed the second page of the certificate without reading the first, which states that for the 2020 election, they are the duly elected and qualified electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Michigan.

Should these voters have read the documents and everything else? I don't disagree with that, Kallman said. But the reality is that's not what they're accused of. They're accused of deliberately trying to defraud, you know, intentionally lying and making a false document. That's clearly not true.

Kallman said he doesn't expect a ruling in the case against Michigan's Republican electors until next year, leaving open the possibility that Choate could be called upon to serve as an official 2024 elector while still under indictment, if Michigan's governor certifies Trump as the state's winner.

If it is certified that [Vice President] Harris has won and there is another attempt to try to get voters to sign something, you can bet I will be involved in that and give my client proper advice and counsel. I will leave it at that, Kallman added.

In Pennsylvania and New Mexico, by contrast, no 2020 pro-Trump voters have been charged.

In an email to NPR, the Pennsylvania attorney general's press office said there was no change in its position on what the voters did, as stated in a 2022 statement to LancasterOnline. Those fake ballots included a proviso that they were only to be used if a court overturned the results in Pennsylvania, which it did not, according to the statement. While their rhetoric and policies were intentionally misleading and deliberately harmful to our democracy, based on our initial review, our office does not believe they meet the legal standard for tampering.

Pro-Trump voters in New Mexico included a similar proviso.

Ash Khare, one of the pro-Trump voters in Pennsylvania, says he doesn't consider himself a fake voter but rather a true patriot who did the right thing, citing an ongoing legal battle at the time over Pennsylvania ballots that many legal experts saw as going nowhere.

“We wouldn’t be wise,” Khare says. “We were just trying to cover the bases in case the decision went the other way.”

Asked how he reacted when he first heard about the charges against pro-Trump voters in other states, Khare said with a laugh: “What went through our minds was, we were smart. They made a mistake. They should have put the same warning we did.”

Patricia Poprik (center), who ran for president for Trump, takes the oath of office with other 2016 Republican electors at the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Matt Rourke/AP

Show caption Matt Rourke/AP

Another Pennsylvania signer, Andy Reilly, a member of the state's Republican National Committee, said he wanted to serve as a potential elector again this year because he knows that sometimes in the heat of a campaign, people can get fervent and cross the line.

“I'm going to make sure that we do everything to preserve, if it's legal, the candidate's rights, but without doing anything that I think would violate the law or the Constitution, as I did last time,” added Reilly, the lawyer.

Why the 2024 election is different from the 2020 election (and why it isn't)

Voters are entering a different environment this year than in 2020, says Green of William & Mary Law School, after the federal vote-counting reform law of 2022 was signed into law.

Many gaps in the previous process, including the lack of a definition of which state official is required to certify who is appointed as a state elector, have now been closed, Green adds.

And charges against some unauthorized pro-Trump voters are still pending.

Given that there have been lawsuits against electors for tampering and conspiracy, I think people in that situation would think twice about serving as an elector and holding some sort of unofficial meeting of the Electoral College, unless there is significant litigation pending that suggests the outcome is somehow undetermined, Green said.

Mary McCord, a former Justice Department official who is now executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center, helped bring a civil lawsuit against 2020 pro-Trump electors in Wisconsin, where a settlement agreement now bars those electors from running again in any U.S. presidential election with Trump on the ballot.

While McCord acknowledges that it will likely be more difficult for pro-Trump voters to attempt similar efforts this year if Trump loses, she warns that persistent misinformation about the election and its results could still fuel another attempt.

The vote counting reform law certainly raises the bar by requiring one-fifth of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate to object to a state’s electoral votes, instead of one representative and one senator as before, McCord notes. But it’s not an impossible threshold to meet, particularly if there is a false narrative that there was voter fraud in a particular state.

Edited by Benjamin Swasey

Sources 1/ https://Google.com/ 2/ https://www.npr.org/2024/09/12/nx-s1-5100909/fake-electors-trump-electoral-college-vote The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article

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