One of the defining features of conspiracy theorists is that they have very little conception of how hard it is to do lots of things in the real world. So I’m sure they had absolutely no plan at all for that hurdle, and most likely were completely unaware of it. These guys think it was trivially easy for the Democrats to steal the election, so why wouldn’t they think it would be just as easy to steal it back?
I peeped at the official Certificate from Ohio, from the link that someone else shared, and it’s pretty wild how many “also-rans” there are. And how goofy some of their names are. “PRESIDENT R19 BODDIE AND ERIC STONEHAM” got 3 votes in Ohio! I can only imagine what the goofy names are across the country.
On a side note - not wanting to derail this thread so hopefully people can answer quickly - who are all of the other people listed under each “candidate” on the Ohio Certificate of Ascertainment? There are 18 electors for each, even the people who got 3 votes. No duplicates. The ones for Trump (Ohio’s winner) are the 18 listed on Ballotpedia as the “electors from Ohio” but who are the other 162 “electors”?
Those are the electors pledged to those candidates. When you “vote for X for President”, you’re actually voting for a slate of electors pledged to that candidate, who will represent your state in the Electoral College. Since Ohio gets 18 votes in the EC, each Presidential candidate on the Ohio ballot actually has 18 pledged electors behind them.
See I woulda thought we had 18 electors period. But what you’re saying is that once all of the ballots are settled (in August, I believe) the state has to tally up the number of people who have made it on to ballots for the President spot, and find 18 people per qualified candidate to be official Electors? Interesting. I never knew it!
Yep.
Which, by the way, means that there were more potential electors pledged to “R19 Boddie and Eric Stoneham” than there were actual votes for them. Six times as many, in fact.
ETA: And, just to clarify, only the 18 electors listed under “President Donald J. Trump and Michael R. Pence” were Ohio’s actual electors, since their slate got the most votes. Only those 18 would be authorized to vote in the Electoral College on Ohio’s behalf. The other slates were all losing candidates to become electors, and none of them were actually electors. I think I got a bit sloppy with that distinction in my first answer.
The plot to overturn the election wasn’t a single orchestrated effort. I think it’s important for everyone to realize that. It was less like an orchestra and more like a three-ringed circus……with Trump as the demented ringmaster.
Let’s look at this subset of the schemes, which had a lot in common.
Rudy - Throw dozens and dozens of lawsuits at dozens of dozens of judges, in the hopes that eventually they’d find one that would issue a court order to block the transition of power. Even though he had failed miserably by January 6th, he still felt if he had 24 more hours the situation would turn around. Therefore he was encouraging Republican senators to stall.
Sidney Powell and Patrick Byrne- Drag out the January 6th congressional session for over 24 hours, allowing them to present with their evidence without media censorship. The evidence would be so overwhelming that everyone would agree to send in the National Guard to perform live-streamed vote recounts.
Peter Navarro - Drag out the January 6th session for over 24 hours with endless debates and presentations, the evidence would be so overwhelming that Mike Pence would reject the certificates and send them back to the states - who would then overthrow their votes
John Eastman- Pressure Mike Pence into refusing to count the votes from certain states, resulting in an EC tie, which would then go to the congressional state delegations. In this plan the only reason for dragging out the session would be to pressure Mike Pence.
While all these plans involved pressuring Mike Pence and having the Republican congress drag out the session, it still wasn’t a single orchestrated plan. Even as the session was proceeding, there wasn’t a consensus over which plan to use.
But that doesn’t negate the individual schemes, which should be vigorously prosecuted.
What I’ve been seeing lately is people brushing off the pile of smoking guns that incriminate all the Trump cronies in these plots because they are searching for some mythical smoking gun that cleans up all the contradictions and ties Trump to everything. Which they won’t find. They are making the same mistakes that they did with Russia, where they ended up tying everything to being able to prove that Trump personally and knowingly coordinated his campaign with the Russian government….which was the one thing they couldn’t prove.
Trump is like those minor Mafia capos , like Paul Vario in Wiseguys (Paul Cicero in the movie adaptation, Goodfellas) who never commit anything to paper, use direct personal communication when they can, and use indirect phrasing to avoid making direct personally incriminating statements on record.
Of course, even when he does slip up, he can count on his Republican politicians to sweep it under the rug and refuse to follow up.
Well, the state doesn’t have to “find” them, the campaigns/parties have to provide the state with their list of who are their respective candidate-electors.
Though Ohio’s form to register a write-in ticket for president and vice president does not actually require the involvement of the candidates for elector, just a list of them, so who knows if they actually knew they were candidates.
One Smoking Gun to rule them all!
pa republicans put a qualifier in their statement. smart move that, perhaps that is why they also called pennsylvania a state.
Right, and then it’s not a matter of the state telling them who to vote for, presumably, they were picked by the candidate and campaign because they are going to vote for them.
website blocked in my country for legal reasons.
Can someone summarize for me? What is the hedged language, and how may it save them.
Exactly this. At least for electors for the Republican and Democratic candidates, they are selected by the parties/campaigns, and are nearly always staunch party loyalists, who are selected specifically because they can be expected to toe the line and vote for their party’s candidates.
From this NPR article:
Also, most states now have laws implementing some form of penalty for “faithless electors” – those who choose to not vote for the slate for which they were appointed.
sorry, here are the paragraphs that explain it.
Republican electors in two other states — Pennsylvania and Nevada — hedged the language on their certificates to say they’d cast their votes for Trump only if his election challenges succeeded in the courts.
These ‘fake ballots’ included a conditional clause that they were only to be used if a court overturned the results in Pennsylvania, which did not happen,” according to a statement released by state Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s office. “Though their rhetoric and policy were intentionally misleading and purposefully damaging to our democracy, based on our initial review, our office does not believe this meets the legal standards for forgery.”
By the way, the “…perhaps that is why they also called pennsylvania a state” refers to the fact that, officially, Pennsylvania isn’t a state, but a commonwealth. There are 46 states and four commonwealths – Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Kentucky. I suspect the document calling Pennsylvania a “state” is held up as evidence that it was forged (or at least dictated) by some outside agency unfamiliar with the distinction. Because no official document purporting to come from Pennsylvania would be likely to use the chance to say “Commonwealth” rather than “State”
Although Pennsylvania usage is looser than the other Commonwealths:
I’ve been part of a committee choosing electors for a candidate. Our criteria was basically…
- Who has earned this by working hard for the party and its candidates
- Who would vote for our candidate even if they knew doing so would set off a bomb killing their entire family.
So just to be clear, is that some sort of signing bonus that you would set up for them or what? 
So…was the plan for Pence to get two sets of electors and pretend to not know which was legit, thereby delaying the process?
One scenario was to give him cover to say — helped along by the protesting Senators and Representatives — that the valid electors for the states in question could not be determined, therefore neither candidate had enough electors to be certified. The next step would be to refer the election to the House (where, as noted, each state delegation has one vote); and since there are more states with a Republican majority in the delegation, Trump would be declared the winner.
ETA: The “delay” theory was based on a GiulianiPowellWood-esque interpretation of the procedural rules which holds that the process must be completed on the 6th. What would have happened if this had been tried is anybody’s guess.