Answer: (do we have to do that here?) the fake electors would have replaced people in the electoral college. These are the people who actually elect a president. When you vote for president, you’re voting for someone in the electoral college who pledged to vote for that person.
But what if a state could override your vote and put in different people in the electoral college? That’s the fake elector plan. They said they were the real electors, when they were not.
I'm glad we're starting to see ramifications for those who actively tried to subvert the democratic process. I thought that'd never happen, I mean if I would have done anything half as illegal, like mail fraud, or bank fraud, I'd be in jail ASAP.
Thanks. How would they ever get away with that? Aren’t electoral college members selected way in advance? I know they aren’t legally required to vote the way their constituents want, but if a state replaced one altogether with a stooge, wouldn’t their vote just not count?
The point wasn't to actually replace the valid electors, it was to create confusion and derail the electoral voting. They wanted to give Pence an excuse to declare the elector votes as broken in enough states that no victor could be certified.
At that point it would fall back upon the House to elect the president.
Who is they in this situation? Is it the fake electors themselves? The state governor? The state legislature?
Is the electoral college like an actual place in Washington where electors gather together and vote for president? Did a bunch of people just show up and say "Oh yeah, we are the electors from Michigan" and everyone just believed them? Is there no way to verify who is the official elector because this has never happened before? Or did this happen not in Washington but somewhere else?
A group of people in Michigan is the They in the recent story. Several other groups also did it in other states. Basically, they pretended that they were the electors and signed document designed to look like the official document in order to cause confusion for long enough to delay. It was a stall tactic.