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What I find infuriating about this discussion is how often the term "fake electors" is used. If the electors were "fake" and the electors commited "fraud", can anyone provide me with a count of how many of the fake electors' votes were mistakenly recorded in the Senate? Oh, none? Amazing! Well, what kind of detective work went into distinguishing the fake votes from the real votes? Was the Secret Service called in for their expertise in detecting counterfeit money?
Obviously the accurate term should be "contingent electors", in the sense that these would have been the correct electors if Trump prevailed in his various lawsuits. It's easy to imagine that in the case where he was able to establish fraud and the court determined that he had won the election, they wouldn't want the process to get held up by the need to quickly get some electors together to cast their votes and mail them to Washington, DC. The Georgia "fake slate" is dated December 14, so there would not have been much time to get these votes recorded if they had had to wait for all litigation to be resolved.
There's such egregious question-begging going on by calling them "fake electors", it makes me crazy how little pushback I have seen regarding this term.
Are they…usually called in for elections? I don’t anything about involving them in Bush v. Gore. How exactly do the fraud claims relate to counterfeit money?
This sounds like special pleading.
As is insisting that the violation was justified because it wouldn’t have inconvenienced the poor, suffering bureaucracy. Such policies are tolerated if and only if they make a nice fig leaf.
My question about the Secret Service was an ironic reference to the idea that if the pieces of paper from these "fake electors" were a big problem when it came time to count the votes, presumably because said papers are difficult to distinguish from the votes cast by "authentic electors," then maybe they would have to call in the Secret Service, who are in charge of prosecuting cases of counterfeiting money and therefore experts in document authentication, to help sort things out.
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How are they not fake? Article II Section 1 Clause 2 of the US Constitution:
Now let’s see the manner the Georgia Legislature has directed electors be appointed. Georgia Code Title 21. Elections § 21-2-499. I won’t quote it here, but the Georgia Secretary of State counts the votes, and the governor certifies the electors for the candidate who got the most votes. The governor certified Joe Biden’s electors on November 20th.
When the Trump electors got together on December 14 and stated, “WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Georgia, do hereby certify the following:” they LIED. They were not the duly elected and qualified electors. It was public knowledge that the duly elected and qualified electors had been chosen on November 20. Despite this, they mailed the “certification” to the US Government. They also identified the “certification” as being mailed per 3 USC 11, which pertains specifically to presidential elector certificates.
I’m really at a loss here. Do you have some metaphysical objection to the entire concept of “fake electors”? If Donald Trump personally spent the entire early voting period in Georgia driving around to various polling locations and voting in the name of dead people still on the rolls would you concede that he committed fraud to steal the election, or would you say he was just using all of his options to contest what he sees as an unfair process?
Interesting that these people didn't commit a crime for certifying an election when the number of illegally cast votes was known to exceed the margin of victory.
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I think lying is probably the wrong word, as is fake. The people signing this document as far as I can tell we’re, at worst, an alternative slate of electors choosing to take this action because they believe the Georgia election was fraudulent in a way that falsely handed the win to Biden. The reason I object to the terms “lying” and “fake”, is that they assume the conclusion— they assume there was no fraud and thus anyone doing anything on the assumption of that fraud is lying. Keep in mind, Trumps claims never got any sort of hearing, most being summarily dismissed on standings issues. In other words, these guys are trying to rectify a situation where they believe the wrong results were certified and thus it might be dishonest, but I don’t see it as fake and they aren’t necessarily lying.
I think they are lying because even if there was fraud - which there wasn't - that still wouldn't make them the 'duly elected and qualified' electors, because the process for choosing those is clearly set out and they did not satisfy it. They weren't just saying we ought to be the electors, which would be fine and expected from someone who believed there was fraud, but that they were the electors, which is simply false from any perspective - or at least that's how I understand it.
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Isn't a really trivial analogy here a sovereign citizen making a false statement to a court about some procedural matter that he believes to be true due to his tortured interpretations of the law but is, as a matter of words and objets as the court would understand, false? Like (meh example) claiming they're a law enforcement officer when they aren't because they were deputized by themselves as a citizen or something.
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You understand that lying involves more than just uttering a false statement, right? Merriam Webster says: "to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive". No intent to deceive, therefore not a lie. As to your question "How are they not fake?" Same answer. No intent to deceive.
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If Trump had won his lawsuits with decisive implications for the election, his slate of electors still had to be appointed by the state legislature. In the absence of that, they're not contingent electors, they're nobody. The only contingency is whether or not he won, which he didn't. In Michigan, for example, the fake electors gathered and selected themselves after all the lawsuits had been resolved (not to Trump's favor, needless to say). They subsequently represented themselves to Congress as the true electors from Michigan despite not being appointed by the legislature. That Congress wasn't fooled doesn't make it less a crime, any more than my attempts to shoot you don't cease to be a crime because my gun jams (nor is my sincere belief that murdering you is justified and legal a defense).
Attempted crimes should be punished, but the details of why the "attempt" failed are relevant to determining whether it was a genuine attempt at all. In your attempted murder analogy, yes, you couldn't shoot me because your gun jammed, but if prior to that attempt you purposely manipulated the gun by jamming up the chamber so that a spent round would get stuck in there and be impossible to eject, that would be evidence that you never intended your "murder attempt" to be effective.
The fact that Congress wasn't fooled doesn't by itself make election fraud not a crime, but the fact that apparently Trump tried this maneuver in several states and in no cases were the "fake elector" votes counted, indicates that there is something suspicious about the narrative that he was trying to deceive Congress. Yes, they sent a piece of paper to Congress saying they were the duly-chosen electors and they were voting for Trump etc., but that paper was presented as what it was, an alternate slate of electors. At no point was Pence saying, "well, now I have no idea which ones are the real votes!"
Ineptitude is not a defense.
That his deceit attempts were transparently absurd?
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This isn’t an apt analogy because the gun not firing was a mechanical issue and you really did try to kill them.
I don’t think anyone believes sending in a bunch of Trump electors would have worked but well got lost in the mail.
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It's the same with the phrase "Overturning the election". When the media declared Biden the winner, the election was over, apparently, so all of Trump's efforts to contest the election get called "overturning the election". They can never concede that Trump genuinely believed himself wronged, that filing lawsuits and contesting results is normal. So Trump never "contested" the election, he always "attempted to overturn" it.
Coverage around the election was better at first. Even NBC.
By December, when the legal battles are falling apart, it starts to be called overturning. Possibly because of the “safe haven” limit, December 8th, and of course the actual certification on the 14th. Some outlets were sticki by with “contest,” though. Then the Capitol riots really turn media opinion.
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I think the idea is that they were in a conspiracy to commit fraud, one is still guilty even if one fails. But more importantly, the fraud laws I have seen always require deception. In what way were these "fake" electors trying to deceive anyone?
The Georgia indictment includes a charge of Conspiracy to Defraud the State, but it doesn't directly relate to the false elector scheme. It relates to the plan to steal voter data.
Deception is not an element of the relevant offence, found in OCGA 16-10-21:
A person commits the offense of conspiracy to defraud the state when he conspires or agrees with another to commit theft of any property which belongs to the state or to any agency thereof or which is under the control or possession of a state officer or employee in his official capacity. The crime shall be complete when the conspiracy or agreement is effected and an overt act in furtherance thereof has been committed, regardless of whether the theft is consummated. A person convicted of the offense of conspiracy to defraud the state shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than five years.
You're probably thinking of last week's indictment. That does have fraud charges relating to the false elector scheme. I don't think deception is an element of those offences either, but I haven't gone back to check.
I can't imagine a definition of fraud that wouldn't involve some kind of deception. Merriam-Webster:
I literally just quoted a legal definition that does not include deceit. If you can't imagine it after having it placed right in front of your eyes, that's a truly profound failure of imagination.
Technically I said fraud not defraud, so that makes me the best kind of correct. Here is the relevant Georgia law, since you are a big fan.
That said, as humorous as you are, you are still wrong. What do you think is involved in the theft? Let's use our imaginations and imagine that Donald Trump says to the official who controls election data, "hey, it's me, Donald Trump, your favorite president. Way better than Carter, obviously. Anyway, I suspect there was fraud in your state, so I need access to your voter data, please send it to me by December 1st." If the official then sends Trump the election data, do you think he would be guilty of theft?
I'm going to skip the part where you answer. The only way Trump and his allies "defrauded the state" in the case at hand is if they falsely claimed that they had the right to voter data.
How is that law in any way relevant? Neither Trump nor his co-conspirators have been charged with it.
I am once again begging you to read the actual statute.
They are guilty of conspiracy to defraud the state if they agree to steal something and commit an overt act in the furtherance of the conspiracy. It's got nothing to do with what they claim or don't claim.
The first person to use the word fraud (without de-) was you. You stated that you didn’t think deception was an element. I commented that fraud would seem to always involve deception. That’s why it’s relevant.
I’ll ask you once again to consider the method by which Trump stole the relevant voter data. It involved lying. A lot. Do you think Trump would have been charged with theft if his claims about the election had been true? The indictment sure makes it seem like the fact he was lying is relevant.
Also, stepping back for a second, there are so many counts in the indictment related to forgery, false documents, and false statements, I don’t know how you managed to start a debate over the one count that (arguably, in your opinion) doesn’t involve deception.
No, it was you. Here.
You seem to get confused easily.
I didn't start that debate. You did. You came into the thread arguing that the false electors could not have been guilty of fraud because they didn't deceive anyone. I responded by pointing out they hadn't been charged with fraud, and the only charge mentioning fraud didn't involve the false electors and didn't include deceit as an element of the offence.
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I guess if they tried to hack the polls or something.
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