Corrections & Clarifications: Aaron Ford is the Attorney General of Nevada. An earlier version used the incorrect title.
Fourteen so-called fake electors conspired by former President Donald Trump to disrupt the results of the 2020 election will serve as Trump’s electors again in 2024, including several who are currently facing criminal charges.
With input from the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, Republican state parties in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada have renominated 14 of the 84 bogus electors from the 2020 election. According to Wisconsin election officials, the state’s electors will not be released until the first week of October. A legal settlement bars Wisconsin’s unauthorized 2020 electors from serving as Trump’s electors again.
This year’s Republican slates in Arizona and Georgia do not include any electors who were selected in 2020. In two other states, fake electors erroneously signed certificates declaring Trump the winner.
The 14 former fake electors who will serve again include the Nevada Republican Party chairman, the Pennsylvania Republican National Committeeman and several current or former county chairs.
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“Politically, or in terms of the health of our democracy, the idea that people who may have committed crimes in furthering a plot to overturn the results of the 2020 election are somehow involved in politics is disturbing,” said Rick Hazen, director of the Project on Protecting Democracy at the UCLA School of Law.
While some may have acted in the belief that they were merely back-ups in case there was a legal change in the outcome, “there is a suspicion that some of them, at the very least, knew what they were doing and knowingly engaged in criminal activity,” Hasen noted.
Of the 14 voters who were re-elected, none responded to requests for comment from USA Today.
The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump faces four felony charges in Washington, DC, for leading a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election and disenfranchise millions of voters. He has refused to commit to unconditionally accepting the results of the upcoming 2024 election, and while he has acknowledged that he lost the 2020 election, he continues to falsely tell his supporters that the 2020 election was “stolen.”
Pending charges
Lawsuits have also been filed against fake electors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada, as well as some people who worked with Trump.
Some lawsuits are moving very slowly. In August, a Maricopa County judge set a tentative trial date for January 5, 2026 in Arizona’s voter fraud lawsuit. The state’s Republican Party did not renominate any of its 2020 electors. In Nevada, the state has appealed to the state Supreme Court a lower court’s decision to dismiss the voter fraud lawsuit, arguing that it was filed in the wrong county.
More: ‘Slightly dangerous’ and ‘problematic’: Inside Trump’s plot to use fake electors to overturn the 2020 election results
Still, voters might think twice about signing such a certificate again, Hasen said.
“Any elected official who is asked to do something questionable this time might think, ‘Hmm, these people got indicted last time, so maybe I shouldn’t do that,'” Hasen said.
Michigan
The Michigan Republican Party named the most false electors. Six of the names on the certificate falsely claiming that Trump won the state are on the list of 15 2024 electors released by the Michigan Secretary of State’s office: Amy Facchinello, John Haggard, Timothy King, Marianne Sheridan, Hank Choate, and Meshawn Maddock, former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party.
Trump lost Michigan in 2020 by about 154,000 votes.
All six face criminal charges. Trials have not yet been scheduled but are not expected to begin before the end of the year.
Choate’s lawyer, David Cullman, said the charges expected in 2020 will not affect electoral votes in 2024. Choate has pleaded not guilty.
“This was also an election year. This has absolutely nothing to do with the last election in 2020,” he said. “I don’t think it has any impact on the criminal case whatsoever.”
Cullman said Choate had no knowledge of any fraud in 2020. He said Trump’s lawyers told electors that the certificates would only be used if the Trump campaign won a court case to overturn Michigan’s election results or if the state legislature intervened.
“My client was advised by trusted attorneys who were present at the meeting that the plan would not be used unless one of these events occurred,” Kalman said.
He said the electors were only given a page to sign, not a page to falsely claim they had voted at the Capitol and that Trump had won.
Pennsylvania
The Pennsylvania Republican Party submitted a slate of presidential electors to the Secretary of State’s office that included five fake electors: Bill Bachenberg, Bernadette Comfort, Ash Carr, Pat Poplick, and Andy Riley. The state has 19 electoral votes. Trump lost by about 80,000 votes in 2020.
Riley, a lawyer, is also the Republican National Committeeman for Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania’s electors would not have signed their false 2020 certificates unless the documents stated that their votes would not be counted until a court ruled in Trump’s favor, so they have not been charged with a crime.
Carre, an electoral college member since 1990, told USA Today in April that he was pushing for the provision to be included.
“We wanted to make sure we weren’t doing anything illegal,” he said.
Nevada
The Nevada Republican Party renominated Nevada state party chairman Michael McDonald and Clark County Republican Chairman Jesse Roe. Although Trump lost the state by 154,000 votes, both men signed their 2020 electoral certificates. The state has six electoral votes.
McDonald, a longtime friend of Trump and a senior adviser to his 2024 campaign, and Rowe were among the electors sued in Nevada. The lawsuit was dismissed over questions about whether it was filed in the right counties, but Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat, appealed to the state Supreme Court.
Trump lost Nevada by more than 30,000 votes.
New Mexico
The New Mexico Republican Party re-nominated former state party chairwoman Débora Waye Maestas. The state has five electoral votes. Its role in the state’s electoral program was always considered an exception. New Mexico is not a swing state and has supported Democrats in every presidential election since 2008. Trump lost the state in 2020, but by about 100,000 votes.
Like Pennsylvania, New Mexico’s 2020 electors will not sign unless it says they won’t count their votes until a court rules in Trump’s favor. New Mexico’s electors have not been charged with a crime.
More: Wisconsin is the last state that could potentially prosecute Trump’s fake electors, but Attorney General Josh Kaul has remained silent
Important legal changes for 2020 and beyond
Electors usually get little attention. In a presidential election year, each party nominates state electors. If their candidate wins, those party electors will vote for their presidential candidate in the Electoral College. Party officials, such as county party chairs and local elected officials, are usually selected; their names must be submitted to the state and made public before the election.
But in 2020, Republican officials in seven states won by President Joe Biden sent false electoral certificates to Congress stating that former President Donald Trump had actually won. The certificates were a baseless attempt to convince lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence that there were serious doubts about the election results in those battleground states.
A House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and Trump’s efforts to retain power after losing the election concluded that the false election certificates were part of a coordinated effort by Trump’s allies to stop Congress from certifying the election results. They had called on Congress to return the election results.
Pence has refused to accept, much less consider, an “alternate” slate of electors.
Jonathan Diaz, director of voting support at the advocacy group Campaign Legal Center, said the plan is unlikely to succeed again. In 2022, Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform Act, changing the rules so that Congress can only count electoral certificates signed by the state governor or other officials authorized by state law when the House and Senate count the votes on January 6. It also raised the threshold for lawmakers who can challenge state vote counts from one House member and one Senator to one-fifth of each chamber. And in 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in Moore v. Harper that state legislatures have little power to overturn the results of elections.
“It will be much harder for the fake Electoral College to pull off the same shenanigans they did in 2020,” Diaz said. [2022 law] “The law was so old that the focus was really on plugging holes that existed in the previous process and making sure we didn’t have to go back to the kind of efforts that were centered around a joint session of Congress.”
USA TODAY reporter Erin Mansfield contributed to this story