Most of the mainstream media cast the Electoral College shenanigans in 2016 as historic.
In 2020, the so-called fake electors who tried to convince Congress that Donald Trump, not Joseph R. Biden, had won the presidential election ended up in the crosshairs of a Justice Department probe and were hit with grand jury subpoenas.
They are now in the spotlight of a House Jan. 6 select committee investigation that characterizes “alternative electors” as part of a coup plot by Mr. Trump.
Electors, who are tasked with casting votes in the Electoral College for the candidates who won in their state’s presidential election, have a history of being unfaithful.
In 2016, a group of electors was widely celebrated after they refused to vote for the candidate who prevailed in their state in a bid to prevent Mr. Trump from becoming president.
Mr. Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College by 304-227 votes, but he lost the popular vote to Mrs. Clinton by 2%.
Michael Baca of Colorado and Bret Chiafalo of Washington, Democratic electors who viewed Mr. Trump as “a threat to democracy,” devised a plan to try to sway 37 electors from various states to vote for someone other than Mr. Trump. They hoped to block Congress from certifying Mr. Trump as the next president and trigger a contingent election in the U.S. House.
They persuaded seven electors to join the effort. Five voted against Hillary Clinton in states she won in a bid to persuade more Trump electors to do the same in states he won.
The New York Times and other media outlets labeled the failed effort “historic.”
The Atlantic published a flattering profile of Mr. Baca and Mr. Chiafalo.
“We’re trying to be that ‘break in case of emergency’ fire hose that’s gotten dusty over the last 200 years,” Mr. Chaifolo told The Atlantic. “This is an emergency.”
The group dubbed themselves “Hamilton Electors.” Founding Father Alexander Hamilton said in The Federalist Papers that the Electoral College “affords a moral certainty that the office of the president will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”
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The 2020 elector scheme is viewed much differently.
The Jan. 6 committee and the Justice Department said the effort was criminal.
Federal agents sent grand jury subpoenas to four people involved in setting up alternative electors for Mr. Trump in swing states that voted for Mr. Biden, including Georgia, Arizona and New Mexico. Among those sought in the investigation is David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, who posed as an alternative Trump elector.
Media reports said another subpoena was issued to the home of Brad Carver, a Georgia lawyer and accused alternative elector. Thomas Lane, a Trump campaign aide who worked in Arizona and New Mexico, was also subpoenaed.
The Justice Department probe of the elector scheme is part of a more extensive investigation into efforts by Mr. Trump to overturn the 2020 election results in the weeks between Nov. 3 and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
Mr. Trump still argues that voting irregularities and fraud skewed the results toward Mr. Biden and rendered the election invalid. The Jan. 6 committee last week outlined Mr. Trump’s failed bid to install Jeffrey Clark, an environmental lawyer in the Justice Department, as acting attorney general.
Mr. Clark drafted a letter saying the Justice Department had found evidence of election fraud and called on Georgia lawmakers to set up a slate of alternative electors. Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue refused to co-sign the letter and threatened a mass resignation at the Justice Department if Mr. Trump installed Mr. Clark.
Mr. Trump sought help from the Republican National Committee in the effort to seat “contingent electors,” according to video testimony presented by the Jan. 6 committee.
RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel told the committee that Mr. Trump and his attorney John Eastman “talked about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing changed the result of any of the states.”
The Republicans accused of trying to establish fake electors defended their actions. They said the plan hinged on the Trump campaign’s lawsuits aimed at overturning the results. Democrats said the Republicans unlawfully pursued the false elector tactic even after dozens of judges nationwide dismissed Mr. Trump’s challenges to the election results.
The Jan. 6 committee last week targeted Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican. They accused Mr. Johnson of trying to hand Vice President Mike Pence a list of alternate electors from Georgia and Wisconsin on the day Mr. Pence was presiding over Congress to certify the winner of the presidential election.
Mr. Johnson is running for a third term in a race Democrats believe they have a shot at winning. Polls show Mr. Johnson statistically tied with a trio of Democrats hoping to challenge him on the November ballot.
The senator said the accusation that he tried to push alternate electors on the vice president is false and is a Democratic effort to hurt him politically.
According to a top Johnson aide, the senator’s staff was asked to give Mr. Pence a list of alternate electors, but they did not carry out the request after researching the matter. Mr. Johnson said the committee released only some of the texts from his office about the request and withheld the texts showing they did not follow through with it.
“The 1/6 committee’s partisan witch-hunt is revealed,” Mr. Johnson said in a message on Twitter. “They smeared me with partial and incomplete information. This sets the record straight. As I have been saying, it is a NON-story driven by corporate media that is complicit in spreading the Dems’ lies.”
The Jan. 6 committee did not respond to a request for comment on Mr. Johnson’s accusation.
The faithless electors of 2016 did not escape unpunished. Four faithless electors from Washington state were fined $1,000 each for failing to vote for Hillary Clinton. Two faithless electors in Colorado were removed by the governor. A challenge to the punishment reached the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2020 that states ultimately have the authority to enforce an elector’s pledge to vote in accordance with the state’s election results.
In a Washington Post op-ed before the ruling, four of the punished electors defended their actions in 2016 and said states were wrong to try to force them to align with the election results in their states.
“We were channeling the voters by trying to give voice to the millions of voters who would have preferred a moderate Republican to Donald Trump,” Mr. Baca, Mr. Chiafalo, Colorado electors Polly Baca and Robert W. Nemanich, and Washington elector Esther John wrote. “The states’ argument is not pro-democracy; it is pro-partisanship.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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