Trump’s 2020 Fake Electors Are Even More Powerful This Time Around
The fake electors that tried to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election are back in position to help in next month’s election. NOTUS reports that out of 82 slated electors in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, and Nevada in this coming election, 14 took part in Trump’s fake elector scheme in 2020. Of Nevada’s six fake electors in 2020, two are back for 2024, including Michael McDonald, the state’s Republican Party chair who is now also a Trump campaign senior adviser. Michigan has six fake electors who are returning for next month’s election. New Mexico has one fake elector from 2020 returning for this election, while Pennsylvania is bringing back five of its fake electors, out of a total of 19, for the 2024 contest. But Arizona and Wisconsin are taking precautions to ensure that fake electors can’t come back. In the Grand Canyon State, Arizona’s attorney general indicted 18 individuals who took part in the state’s fake elector scheme in 2020, and the 11 fake electors from back then, who include a Turning Point USA executive, two state representatives, and the executive director of the Arizona Republican Party, are not on the list of Arizona electors for 2024. Wisconsin’s 10 fake electors were sued by a progressive law firm working with the Georgetown University Law Center, with the case reaching a settlement where they all agreed to publicly state that President Biden won the 2020 election and to never again serve as electors for Trump. But even as many of the 2020 fake electors won’t be attempting to repeat their efforts in this election, some will be in more powerful positions in states including Wisconsin. One fake elector, Robert F. Spindell Jr., is on the Wisconsin Elections Commission until 2026 and says he’ll be “insuring that voters have confidence in the outcome of our elections.” One fake elector in Michigan, Stanley T. Grot, refuses to resign as the clerk of Shelby Township, a Detroit suburb, even though he was indicted last year along with the state’s other fake electors. Worryingly, his job entails maintaining local voter registration files and administering November’s elections in the township. In Georgia, one fake elector, Burt Jones, even became the state’s lieutenant governor, receiving support from Trump, who said Jones was a “conservative warrior” who would “get to the bottom of the Nov. 3 presidential election scam.”President Biden signed Electoral College reform into law in 2022 to ensure that the chaos caused by Trump in 2020 couldn’t happen again. But as NOTUS’s report shows, the same pro-Trump conservatives are still in positions of power to cause chaos again in multiple scenarios.
The fake electors that tried to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election are back in position to help in next month’s election.
NOTUS reports that out of 82 slated electors in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, and Nevada in this coming election, 14 took part in Trump’s fake elector scheme in 2020.
Of Nevada’s six fake electors in 2020, two are back for 2024, including Michael McDonald, the state’s Republican Party chair who is now also a Trump campaign senior adviser. Michigan has six fake electors who are returning for next month’s election.
New Mexico has one fake elector from 2020 returning for this election, while Pennsylvania is bringing back five of its fake electors, out of a total of 19, for the 2024 contest. But Arizona and Wisconsin are taking precautions to ensure that fake electors can’t come back.
In the Grand Canyon State, Arizona’s attorney general indicted 18 individuals who took part in the state’s fake elector scheme in 2020, and the 11 fake electors from back then, who include a Turning Point USA executive, two state representatives, and the executive director of the Arizona Republican Party, are not on the list of Arizona electors for 2024.
Wisconsin’s 10 fake electors were sued by a progressive law firm working with the Georgetown University Law Center, with the case reaching a settlement where they all agreed to publicly state that President Biden won the 2020 election and to never again serve as electors for Trump.
But even as many of the 2020 fake electors won’t be attempting to repeat their efforts in this election, some will be in more powerful positions in states including Wisconsin. One fake elector, Robert F. Spindell Jr., is on the Wisconsin Elections Commission until 2026 and says he’ll be “insuring that voters have confidence in the outcome of our elections.”
One fake elector in Michigan, Stanley T. Grot, refuses to resign as the clerk of Shelby Township, a Detroit suburb, even though he was indicted last year along with the state’s other fake electors. Worryingly, his job entails maintaining local voter registration files and administering November’s elections in the township.
In Georgia, one fake elector, Burt Jones, even became the state’s lieutenant governor, receiving support from Trump, who said Jones was a “conservative warrior” who would “get to the bottom of the Nov. 3 presidential election scam.”
President Biden signed Electoral College reform into law in 2022 to ensure that the chaos caused by Trump in 2020 couldn’t happen again. But as NOTUS’s report shows, the same pro-Trump conservatives are still in positions of power to cause chaos again in multiple scenarios.
