At least 30 election deniers and 2020 fake electors serving as Trump electors this year
By Marshall Cohen, Danya Gainor, Alison Main, Majlie de Puy Kamp, Casey Tolan and Bob Ortega, CNN
(CNN) — More than a dozen Republicans who were “fake electors” in 2020, including several facing criminal charges, are serving as former President Donald Trump’s official electors in battleground states this year, according to a CNN survey.
Another 16 GOP electors from these states are election deniers who say President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was fraudulent. Combined, these election deniers and 2020 fake electors represent more than a third of the 82 electors picked this year to support Trump in the seven states where he attempted to overturn the results in 2020.
The involvement of these Republican activists in the Electoral College process this year, especially in critical battlegrounds like Pennsylvania and Michigan, could lead to post-election chaos if Trump is defeated and they try again to subvert the will of the voters.
Their participation also highlights how a huge part of the Republican Party continues to fully embrace Trump’s election denialism
“Those who participate in election fraud should be held accountable, not given another bite at the apple,” said Lindsey Miller, research director at Informing Democracy, a nonprofit that works to safeguard the vote-counting and election certification process.
Most of the fake electors and election deniers did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
In 2020, the Republicans now known as “fake electors” were originally tapped before the election to serve as Trump’s real electors from those states – if he won. But after he lost, at the behest of the Trump campaign, they signed phony certificates falsely proclaiming that he won their states.
Trump then tried to use those certificates to stay in power. By pressuring then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject Biden’s electors and recognize the fake GOP electors while Pence presided over the Electoral College certification in Congress on January 6, 2021, Trump hoped to throw the issue back to the states in a bid to remain in the White House.
A few things have changed that would make it even harder for Trump to attempt to certify his electors from states he lost.
For starters, his 2024 opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, will preside over the certification process in January 2025. As Pence explained in 2021, the role of the vice president is entirely ceremonial. Congress passed reforms in 2022 to make that crystal clear.
That new law also makes it harder for lawmakers to raise objections to a state’s electors by increasing the threshold for the number of House and Senate members required to do so. Further, Trump isn’t the sitting president, so he can’t try to weaponize the Justice Department to aid his election subversion efforts like he did in 2020.
Michigan
Out of the seven states Trump targeted in 2020, Michigan’s slate of Republican electors for 2024 has – by far – the largest share of election deniers and 2020 fake electors.
Six of the 15 Republican electors from the Wolverine State this year were fake electors in 2020 and are facing charges for their involvement in the scheme. (They all pleaded not guilty.) And another six have falsely claimed that the 2020 election was fraudulent.
Shortly before the 2024 slate of electors was picked at the state party convention in August, Michigan GOP chairman Pete Hoekstra defended the involvement of the six fake electors from 2020, saying, “I still believe they have their day in court.”
They are Meshawn Maddock and Marian Sheridan, former Michigan GOP officials; John Haggard and Timothy King, who were part of a frivolous election lawsuit in 2020; Amy Facchinello, who has posted QAnon material online; and dairy farmer Hank Choate.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, was the first prosecutor in the country to charge any 2020 fake electors. They were charged in August 2023, and an investigator testified earlier this year that Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator.
Another 2024 Michigan elector, Jim Tokarski, told the Detroit News last year that the 2020 election was “stolen,” and said Trump “deserves to have his next term in office.”
Linda Glisman, another GOP elector this year, previously claimed the 2020 election was “filled with cheating,” with “election fraud on a grand scale,” according to a questionnaire she filled out in 2022 during an unsuccessful statehouse campaign. She also said the Trump supporters who went to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, were “patriots.”
Andrew Sebolt said in a similar questionnaire that the 2020 election was rigged. He also used the phrase “plandemic,” a term for a grab bag of Covid-19 conspiracy theories.
Pennsylvania
More than a third of Pennsylvania’s 19 Republican electors this year are either election deniers or signed the phony certificates in 2020.
Five of the 2020 fake electors from the state were tapped to serve as 2024 electors.
The most prominent of the five is Bill Bachenberg, a wealthy Republican donor who is the most prominent of the group, has been linked to efforts in at least three states to breach election systems after the 2020 election in hopes of proving Trump’s conspiracy theories about widespread fraud. He is also a board member of the National Rifle Association, which endorsed Trump.
Unlike most other states Trump targeted in 2020 with fake electors, the certificates these Pennsylvania Republicans signed said they were only meeting in case a “non-appealable court order” later determined Trump actually won. This was added after some GOP electors raised last-minute concerns over the legality of the plan. Thanks to this hedged language, the 2020 fake electors in Pennsylvania weren’t charged.
At least two more of Pennsylvania’s GOP elector slate this year are election deniers, according to CNN’s analysis of their previous public statements and voting records.
Carla Sands, the US ambassador to Denmark under Trump, who is a 2024 elector, has said, “the election of 2020 was stolen” and falsely claimed her 2020 mail-in ballot wasn’t counted. And former Rep. Fred Keller backed a lawsuit to overturn the results from four states Trump lost and voted to throw out Pennsylvania’s legitimate Democratic electors on January 6, 2021.
Another elector, Samuel “Jim” Worthington, previously posted that he had “no doubt” the 2020 election was “inaccurate and corrupted,” and attended Trump’s fiery Ellipse rally on January 6, 2021. But he told CNN he never went to the Capitol that day, doesn’t see himself as an election denier, and now accepts Biden as the legitimate president.
Nevada
Two of Nevada’s electors this year were fake electors from 2020.
They are Nevada GOP chairman Michael McDonald and Jesse Law, chairman of the Clark County GOP, which is home to most of the state’s voters and includes Las Vegas.
Both were indicted last year in connection with the 2020 fake electors plot, but a judge threw out the charges in June because they were not filed in the proper jurisdiction. Nevada’s Democratic attorney general, who brought the case, is appealing that decision.
The 2024 slate also includes Washoe County GOP chairman Bruce Parks, dubbed a “leading voice” in Nevada election denialism by the investigative outlet ProPublica. Parks led the Washoe GOP chapter when it rejected Biden’s 2020 win and called him “acting president.” Parks regularly touts false claims of mass voter fraud.
Georgia
At least five of Georgia’s 16 Republican electors this year are election deniers, have embraced Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 results, or defended the fake electors.
The Washington Post called Georgia GOP Treasurer Caroline Jeffords “among the state’s leading election deniers” last year, citing her involvement in litigation against Fulton County alleging that counterfeit ballots were used in the 2020 election.
Cobb County GOP chair Salleigh Grubbs previously told CNN that she doesn’t believe the 2020 election results from her county. She submitted the controversial proposal that the Trump-aligned Georgia State Election Board approved in August that gave local officials more power to investigate ballots and possibly delay certifying the final results.
Suzi Voyles, assistant secretary for the Georgia Republican Party and a self-proclaimed “election expert,” was fired by Fulton County as a poll worker after raising baseless concerns about ballot-counting procedures in 2020 (investigators found no evidence supporting her allegations). On her X account, Voyles has tweeted out links to far-right outlets suggesting that the 2020 election was “one of the most lawless in US history.”
In a NPR interview last month, Georgia Republican Party chair Josh McKoon, said Trump “lawfully contest(ed)” the 2020 results in Georgia and refused to say outright that Trump lost the state. (Trump is facing Georgia state charges over his actions in 2020).
Gwinnett County GOP official Laurie McClain shared a Facebook post in 2023 expressing solidarity with the 2020 fake electors, whom she called “innocent patriots.” The post led to a site likening the “false media narrative” about the electors to the Loch Ness Monster.
“The suggestion that anything these electors did was in any way criminal and worthy of the millions of dollars that have been spent to fight this frivolous indictment is, in fact, less credible than claims of a Bigfoot sighting,” McClain told CNN in an email, referring to the state charges against three Georgia Republicans who were 2020 fake electors.
Wisconsin
To settle a civil lawsuit brought by Wisconsin’s real 2020 Democratic electors, the state’s fake GOP electors from 2020 agreed to stay out of the 2024 election process.
Jeff Mandell, general counsel of Law Forward, which sued the GOP electors, said the goal of the settlement was “to fully unpack what had happened and how and who was involved, to make sure that there was accountability for those who were involved, and to make sure that there was deterrence, so that nothing like this could happen again.”
The slate of GOP electors for 2024 does include at least one 2020 election denier.
State Rep. Angie Sapik claimed that China had “rigged” the 2020 election and tweeted“Rage on, Patriots!” during the January 6, 2021, insurrection according to now-deleted social media posts reported by Wisconsin Watch, a nonpartisan investigative outlet.
More recently, Sapik has raised concerns about a ballot mistake in Madison that sent duplicate ballots to up to 2,000 voters last month. Election officials repeatedly said there is no way the duplicates would be counted, but some Wisconsin Republicans, including Sapik, used the error to question the legitimacy of the 2024 election. She posted on Facebook, “this is not democracy” and accused election officials of “lying to the public.”
In an email to CNN, Sapik said her comment that “this is not democracy” was a reaction to “witnessing official press releases change” from Madison election officials as they explained the duplicate ballots – which she conceded was “indeed a mistake.” She did not answer questions about her tweets regarding January 6 and the 2020 results.
New Mexico
New Mexico wasn’t a presidential battleground in 2020 – and isn’t expected to be competitive this year either – but was still the site of a fake GOP elector slate in 2020.
With its small population, New Mexico only has five electoral votes. Debbie Maestas is the only one of the 2020 fake electors who was picked by the state Republican Party to serve as a presidential elector in 2024. She ran the New Mexico GOP from 2014 to 2016 and was also a delegate for the state in the 2016 Republican National Convention.
Prosecutors have said none of New Mexico’s fake electors will face charges.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat, has said they weren’t prosecuted because – like Pennsylvania – they hedged the language in their phony certificate to make clear they were only acting as electors-in-waiting in case Trump won any of his election lawsuits.
Arizona
There is at least one avid election denier among Arizona’s 11 GOP electors this year:
Arizona GOP chairwoman Gina Swoboda, who heads the Voter Reference Foundation, which is widely known for its unfounded claims of having evidence of fraud from 2020.
In a local TV interview last month, Swoboda claimed the 2020 election “was stolen fair and square” from Trump because “the rules were changed in the middle of the game.”
CNN’s Ethan Cohen, Jason Morris, Scott Glover and Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this report
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