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Notes -
What's the Motte's perspective on why Trump's "fake" (contingent) electors scheme not a great deal? Truthfully, I'm not very familiar with the US electoral system, so I'd be grateful for any and all corrections.
As far as I understand, this is not the first time when an alternative slate of electors was submit - 1960's Hawaii election seems to be another example and it became a precedent of when it's permissible to submit an alternate slate. From what I'm seeing, though, the differences between this example and Trump's scheme are
The Kennedy electors from Hawaii were illegally chosen and illegally counted. Article II Section 1 of the Constitution:
The "time of chusing the electors" ended with the safe harbor deadline on December 13, 1960, at which point only the Nixon electors were certified. Thus, they were the only electors constitutionally chosen. It was Nixon's mistake to side with the spirit of the law (who won the popular vote) instead of the letter of the law (who the constitutionally appointed electors were) and count the Kennedy electors.
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The Acting Governor of Hawaii certified the election on November 28th, both slates of electors sent notice that they were 'duly elected' on December 19th, with the GOP electors including the certificate of election. It was only after appeals and a court order (December 30th) that it was recertified the other direction on January 4th, and then Congress recognized the electors that had been fake at the time they were sent.
Part of the problem is that we do have precedent that the House of Representatives can choose to not use the certified slate of electors, even if the corrections are done after the Electoral Count Act safe harbor date.
The other part, and a large portion of what the Eastman memos depended on, was that there's clearly some point where Congress can look at a slate of electors and go 'no', and barring very specific approaches to federalism, there probably should be. Most alternative schema either devolve to state executives being able to pick their electors, and/or a barrage of randos calling themselves electors and inundating Congress -- poetic, but not better.
The Kennedy approach was more colorable (though given what we've since learned about Texas and Chicago, it's still far from clear Kennedy legitimately won), but in both 1960 and 2020, the court cases were still ongoing when the electors sent their slates.
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