It seems not to be in compliance with the law if the National Archives would refuse to send a “purported” slate simply because it did not have the governor’s signature. The law that @flurb cited recognizes that there might be purported returns without a governor’s signature. Further, what would stop a rogue governor from withholding his or her signature on a valid return?
Note: This is for fun hypothetical purposes only; not that I am suggesting any party or person should ever do it.
It looks like PDFs of both the (official/final/legit) Ascertainments and Certificates of Votes for each state are accessible through:
It begs the question of whether “high quality” forgeries would have ended up with Pence as the tie-breaker. Maybe the real impediment to the treason effort was shitty Photoshop work.
Which is what I meant by administrative (or clerical) failures.
It just has to pass some sort of scrutiny by the National Archives in order to make it to Congress, it seems. Just where is that bar ?
There’s no way this was Trump’s idea – it involves more than one step.
IIRC, on Maddow’s show last night, she mentioned that at least one of the suspect slates was sent back, by the archivist, to the legislature of that state.
That was Michigan. Michigan has sent the slate of trump electors to doj for federal prosecution. Mi ag is considering state charges as well.
The article is paywalled but the Arizona Republic had this to say about that today:
On Dec. 14, 2020, a group of prominent Republicans, including the party’s chair, Kelli Ward, former lawmaker Anthony Kern and incoming legislator Jake Hoffman signed a document declaring themselves the state’s electors, in favor of Trump…
But Trump had lost Arizona. Gov. Doug Ducey had certified the election results in late November. By state statute, the only electors who mattered were those pledged to cast their votes for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, as they did Dec. 14, 2020, at noon.
The document the Republicans signed, obtained from the National Archives last year by the group American Oversight, overlooked that detail.
To recap, Arizona’s traitor’s did sent their fake certificates of electors to the National Archives. I don’t know what happened to them after that.
Cite for this? Would love to see someone face consequences for lying and forgery.
This is all playing out in real-time:
Thanks. Fingers crossed that the other states take seriously the attempt to subvert elections using forgery, lies and conspiracy.
Rachel had the ag and sos of Michigan on last night. The ag felt that doj could get to who was behind the template that multiple states used better than mi. The wording and template was very similar in each of the states found to do this so far.
Ag has not ruled out state charges as there would not be a double jeopardy thing with state and fed. charges.
His name was RICO
He wore a diamond
He was escorted to his chair
He saw Lola dancing there …
[a guy can dream]
It sounds to me that implicit in the whole process to handle alleged conflicting ballots, was that they be conflicting apparently legit ballots. Because, until now, it would have been understood that no sensible officialdom would just allow trolls to ball up the process.
…
Subversive: “I hereby submit this slate, indicating that the Electors from this state are the following, and cast their votes for Donald Trump”
Official: “Oh? That’s nice… and you are…?”
Subversive: “…uh… the State Vice Chair of the Make America Even Greater committee”
Official: “Good, good… so, not from the Governor’s office… not the Elections Supervisor… not the Speaker of the Assembly… right. So, did these ‘electors’ cast these ballots at the seat of the State Legislature on the statuted date?”
Subversive: “…ummm… no… at the Airport Day’s Inn.”
Official: “I see…”
Subversive: “…is there a problem?”
Official: “Need Answer Fast?”
Come on. Everybody knows that Electors always cast their ballots at
Four Seasons Total Landscaping.
The Act is pretty prescriptive about what must be counted, but it also provides a procedure for objecting to electors if at least one Representative and one Senator do so in writing. In such instance, a majority in both chambers must vote to sustain the objection. While Republicans were planning last year to object to numerous states electors, they only objected to Arizona and Pennsylvania (they were in the middle of considering the Arizona objection when the incursion happened, and no Republican Senator would support an additional objection except for Josh Hawley on Pennsylvania because he’s a piece of shit).
And like any set of rules, it depends on a certain amount of fidelity by the participants. There’s any number of ways that Pence in particular could have been in a position to subvert the process.
With a porn shop next door? No way.
While I’m sure that there probably was an understanding that obvious crank documents would be put in the round file (even though this would seem to violate the letter of the law), in my research I found that on at least one occasion an obvious joke certificate was opened and read.
Of course, this was back when the counting of electors was a dull, boring, preordained formality where Senators and Congressmen could have a little harmless joke with their colleagues instead of an avenue to attempt a coup.
Part of the investigative process should be determining how much of this activity was done prior to Election Day (both with regard to this aspect and all the others) in order to undermine any claim that is was in response to any vote fraud.
Some of them may try, but it won’t matter.
Trump, and by extension his inner circle, religiously follow the “will no one rid me of this troublesome priest” leadership model favored by mob bosses. They do not issue direct orders, they express desires vaguely into the ether and trust that their minions will deliver.
In this case, I would be shocked if Trump or any of his delegates directly called any of these state actors and explicitly told them to create and submit falsified election material of this or any other sort. Rather, as far as I can tell, the Trump White House and its allies in think tanks and the media formulated a hypothetical course of events according to which Trump could be re-elected, and then said, Wouldn’t it be interesting if something like this were to happen. The loyalists at lower levels took the hint and ran with the ball, and now here we are.
Courts and prosecutors aren’t stupid, and this kind of transparent indirect guidance in organized crime is not a reliable shield for escaping accountability. Where consistent downward pressure and rewards for collaborators can be documented, even where no explicit commands are recorded, convictions can be and have been obtained.
In this case, though, the political dimension makes this a much dicier proposition, as courts are loath to intrude on the boundaries of acceptable political speech. While Trump’s MO will be seen as scummy and dangerous, absent a foolish mistake where Trump or a lieutenant generated an unambiguous command to falsify the results, deliberate intent will remain deniable.
Uh, no. It was widely reported at the time. And it was integral to the Jan 6th plot.
The plan was to give Pence two slates of electors, and have him declare that he can’t choose between them.
According to Mr Eastman’s plan, which was never enacted even in part, Mr Pence would have interrupted the normal procedure of reading out the Electoral College vote by abruptly announcing that Arizona has sent “multiple slates of electors”, and that as a result, he would “defer decision on that until finishing the other states”. The other “disputed” states that Mr Biden in fact won would be similarly pushed aside.
Mr Pence would then have gone on to announce that “because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 states, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those states” – reducing the number of “electors appointed” to 454. At that point, Mr Pence would have gavelled Mr Trump as re-elected with 232 votes.
Agreed. I don’t understand why there haven’t been prosecutions yet.
No, the plan was for Pence to deliberately accept them as equally valid.
Fortunately, Pence refused to go along with it.
About bloody time too.
This is the part that seems in contradiction to the information brought forth in this thread.
ISTM that the National Archives deemed the forged documents from the seven contested states to be invalid, but that – had that step gone the other way (what I called a ‘better Photoshop job’) – Pence might have actually received ‘contested slates’ and been in a position to throw the election.
It reminds me a bit of the Japanese Fu-Go Bombs in WWII – probably something of a Hail Mary, but if they had worked …