US electors to certify Trump's win in process targeted by fake electors in 2020

Source: The Guardian

Tue 17 Dec 2024 07.00 EST


Electors will meet in all 50 states on Tuesday to ratify the second election of Donald Trump to the presidency, a process typically no more than a ceremonial step to the White House for the winner of an election. Usually, it lacks drama. But four years ago on 20 December 2020, Republican activists met in seven states won by Joe Biden – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – to sign false certificates of ascertainment proclaiming victory for Donald Trump and Mike Pence, to be sent to the National Archives and to Congress.

Prosecutors have described the intent behind this act of “fake electors” as the provision of a rationale for the vice-president to either declare Trump president or to throw the election to Congress to decide on 6 January 2021. On that day, rioters breached the US Capitol intent on subverting the results of the election.

The constitution states that on the first Tuesday following the second Wednesday of December after a presidential election, each state’s presidential electors gather in each state’s capitol to cast their vote in the electoral college for president and vice-president. The electoral college is an artifact of the politics of slavery; created at the insistence of southern states because it initially enhanced the voting power of states with larger enslaved populations due to the apportionment value of the three-fifths compromise.

The re-election of Trump in November by a decisive margin, coupled with the relative acceptance of the results by his political opponents, suggests no second wave of shenanigans on Tuesday. Nonetheless, Congress tightened up language about how the process works after the January 6 insurrection, the latest of periodic adjustments to the 248-year-old tradition of the electoral college.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/17/electoral-college-certifies-votes-trump