What is a “fake elector”?
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Electors are a holdover from the early days of the United States
Before telephones, the internet, TV news, etc elections were very much a local affair. Once an election was over it was the job of the appointed elector to ride on horseback to the Congress to report the results of the election in their area.
This is part of the basis of the Electoral College. You don’t technically vote for the President directly, but rather for the elector that in turn votes for the President on your behalf based on the results of that election.
Today the role still exists but it’s more ceremonial than anything.
During the last Federal Election a group of Republicans who were disatisfied with the results submitted fake paperwork claiming they were electors and attempted to go to Congress in their state to report a false result of the Presidential Election.
They were caught immediately and turned away, because it was absurd to think that this could work.
They are currently in court
In the United States we don’t vote directly for the President. Instead, the Constitution requires each state to select a group of people (electors) who will then vote for the President. This is the Electoral College. In modern times, every state appoints these electors according to the popular vote in that state. Each party with a Presidential candidate on the ballot will name a slate of electors, and whichever party’s candidate wins the state then that slate of electors gets certified as the official delegation of the state, and is authorized to cast the state’s electoral votes.
A fake elector is someone who claims, or is claimed by another person, to be authorized to cast electoral votes on behalf of the state but has not been actually certified by the state to do so.
The honest answer is “fake elector” is a fabricated lie. What they were is “alternate electors” for which there is precedent for in elections with legal challenges. In the 1960 election Hawaii was certified as won for Republicans, but the Democrats were filing suit for some election discrepancies. So both parties sent electors to DC and then Vice President Nixon decided to accept the Democrat electors and the election went to the democrats.
Electors are a holdover from the early days of the US. The US was a very big country by European standards even when it only included just the states along the east coast. It would never be practical to try to hold an election in just one day when travel from one end of the country to the other took a few weeks even by express horse courier (with rest stations to change horses even).
So instead each State holds its own local state election for president and uses the results of that to decide how to cast its allotted shares of votes in the big election meeting to be held a few weeks later in Washington DC. Regardless of the issue of how many shares each state gets and whether that’s fair or not, which is a whole can of worms, what matters here is HOW those shares are sent to Washington DC to get tallied.
You might think that, say if a state gets 8 shares of votes in the presidential election, that this means the state election board would write out 8 filled in ballots on paper, store them in some kind of secure lockbox, and sent that lockbox to the big meeting in DC by bonded courier or something.
Nope.
Instead of that sensible system, they don’t send 8 *filled in ballots*, they send 8 *people with instructions*. Those 8 people will go to DC and deliver that state’s votes by proxy, having been ordered by their state to vote for the candidate that won that state.
Those people are the state’s “electors”.
As you can imagine, it would be a broken democracy if those people voted for someone other than who actually won their state’s election. But technically there isn’t anything in the federal constitution preventing this, which is scary. It’s up to each state to decide for themselves how they ensure the electors they sent do what they should. Most do it by having their own local laws those electors are bound by, and by changing *whom they send* based on who won. If a Republican won their state, the state would send electors who are all card-carrying die-hard Republicans and thus unlikely to backstab their own party’s candidate, If a Democrat won their state, the state would send electors who are all Democrats for the same reason.
But technically the laws at the federal level don’t require any of this. It’s really up to each state to make sure their own election is carried out properly.
And that was a path that several groups unhappy with Trump’s loss tried using to change the tally of the 2020 presidential election. First they tried convincing some states that had mostly Republican legislatures but who’s population voted for Biden to declare their state’s election results wrong and instead send a different delegation of electors to vote for Trump. When that didn’t work, some tried to get fake credentials signed so they could go to DC and cast votes for Trump pretending to be their state’s actual electors when they weren’t. These are the “fake electors” you may have heard about who are working their way through the court system now going on trial for election meddling.
The plan wasn’t likely to work because who had won the election tally for each state was already publicized so when a state’s electors didn’t vote that way it would immediately show up as obvious meddling. BUT, it would tie up the election in delays as people try to argue that those votes don’t count and that state should be able to use its proper electors instead. That delay was the real goal. In the long run it would be obvious that meddling had happened had the plan gone through, but it would likely have prevented the inauguration from happening on time, letting Trump continue as acting president declaring a state of emergency over the “invalid election” that clearly is spoiled (by his own people but he wouldn’t say that) and therefore doesn’t count.
It’s kind of an odd term. There was a similar case in Hawaii in 1960 where both parties slated electors in case they won after recounts. The Georgia electors attempted to copy that with some differences.
The allegation this time, is that different from the previous case they were trying to trick people into thinking they were the actual electors, not that they believed they were there in case a recount or a court decision changed their states election.
You know when you asked your Mom if you could get a piece of candy before dinner and she said “No.” Then you asked your Dad and he said “Yes.” You Dad is like a “fake elector.”
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