Justice needs to be delivered in 2020 election fraud cases

In the days and weeks following the 2020 election, partisans across the country used lies and deception to defraud the American people and steal the White House.

Although Joe Biden is the clear-cut winner, he has achieved huge margins. popular vote and electoral college84 fake voters signed affidavits confirming that Donald Trump carried seven battleground states.

He didn’t.

Those electoral votes accounted for nearly a third of the number needed to win the presidency and would have been more than enough to overturn Biden’s victory and grant Trump a second term, against the wishes of most voters.

To some, the attempted election theft is old (and eagerly covered up) news.

The events that culminated in the violent attack on the Capitol and the attempt to prevent Biden from taking office occurred half a decade ago, as those wielding shovels might say, and they are about as relevant as those faded social distancing stickers you still see in some stores. Trump was also given a second-place finish in the White House in 2024 by a large number of voters.

But if you believe that justice and honesty have an expiration date, that doing wrong is okay with enough time, and that the core values ​​of our country and democracy (starting with fair and honest elections) only matter to the extent that they help your political side prevail, that’s just old news.

It bears repeating: “What we’re talking about here is an attempt to overturn the outcome of the presidential election,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, who directs the Voting Rights and Elections Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy think tank at New York University. “If people can engage in this type of behavior without consequences or accountability, then we should be worried about it happening again.”

Therefore, punishment and deterrence are very important.

Last week the Nevada Supreme Court unanimously reopened the criminal case It’s against six Republicans who signed certification falsely claiming that Trump won the state’s electoral votes. Those charged include Nevada’s GOP chairman, Michael McDonald, and the state’s Republican National Committee representative, Jim DeGraffenreid.

The decision focused on a procedural issue: whether charges should be brought in Douglas County, where the forged certificates were signed in Carson City, the state capital, or in Clark County, where they were filed at a courthouse in Las Vegas. A lower court ruled that the charges should be brought in Douglas County and dismissed the case. The high court overturned the decision, allowing the investigation into the forgery charge to continue.

And so it should be. Let the jury decide.

Of course, the Nevada Six and other fake voters are just little fry. Donald “Find Me 11,780 Votes” Trump, the ringleader and the main responsible for the theft attempt, escaped responsibility by winning the 2024 elections.

This month, he pardoned several fake voters and others involved in election heist, including his bumbling former attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, of possible federal crimes. The move was purely symbolic; Trump’s pardon power does not extend to cases filed in state courts.

But this was further evidence that he greatly disdained the rule of law. (Just hours after taking office, Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 defendants, including those involved in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, who brutalized officers with pepper spray and wooden and metal poles.)

Efforts across the country to prosecute even these low-level schemers, cheats, and 2020 election miscreants have had mixed results.

A judge in Michigan dismissed the criminal case against 15 fake voters, ruling that the government failed to present sufficient evidence that the fake voters intended to commit fraud.

Inside new mexico and in Pennsylvania, fake voters avoided investigation because their certificates came with a caveat. He said documents were submitted if they were recognized as legitimate voters. The issue became moot when Trump lost the fight to overturn the election, but some in Trump’s orbit hoped the fake certificates would help put pressure on Pence.

Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller is skeptical of many of the cases brought by prosecutors and suggests that the ballot box may be a better place to conduct litigation than the courtroom.

“There’s a fine line between what’s unwelcome and what’s criminal behavior,” Muller said. “I don’t have easy answers about what kinds of things should or shouldn’t be prosecuted at any given moment, other than to say whether this is a new thing” — like these 2020 cases — “it’s pretty important to have a pretty solid legal theory if you’re going to prosecute people for engaging in these kinds of political protest activities.”

Other cases are ongoing.

Three fake voters are scheduled to have a preliminary hearing on fraud charges in Wisconsin next month. Fourteen defendants, including Giuliani and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, face charges in Georgia. In Arizona, the state attorney general must decide this week whether to move forward with the case against 11 people after a judge rejected an indictment because of the way the case was presented to grand jurors.

Justice in the 2020 elections was far from certain and swift. But this is no reason to give up.

The penalty for hijacking a plane is at least 20 years in federal prison. This seems extreme for fake voters.

But dozens of bad actors tried to hijack an election. They should not be left unpunished.