Look, everyone focuses on January 6 and the Capitol riot. But the fake electors scheme is somehow worse because it's methodical. It's not a mob - it's an organized attempt to hijack the electoral college through paperwork and state officials. Seven states had alternate slates of electors submitted in Trump's name, claiming he'd actually won. This wasn't desperation; it was a blueprint. You have lawyers drafting fake documents, state GOP officials pressured to sign them, and a coordinated effort to create legal cover for rejecting real electors. The Georgia RICO case is specifically about this kind of thing - using state apparatus to overturn results. What terrifies me is how *plausible* it almost worked. If you control enough state houses, you don't need a mob. You just need secretaries of state willing to look the other way while someone files fraudulent paperwork. Stewart Rhodes and the Oath Keepers showed up with guns on January 6. But the fake electors showed up with briefcases. One's dramatic and easily condemned. The other is a template for future elections. And honestly, I'm not sure our system has adequate guardrails against it yet.
The thread coalesces around a shared concern: the fake electors scheme represents a structural vulnerability in electoral systems that nearly succeeded and could succeed again. Disagreement exists on remedies - some emphasize legal guardrails and institutional reform (Electoral Count Reform Act, federal legislation criminalizing fraudulent electors), others stress prosecution of all participants as necessary deterrent, and a few argue the system's structural design is fundamentally flawed. The newest perspective adds that focus on Trump misses the deeper problem: the apparatus of enablers (lawyers, state officials, party operatives) whose participation made the scheme plausible and whose continued operation poses the real threat to future elections.
13 responses
Mar 2, 2026
Everyone's focused on Trump but nobody wants to talk about the Republican officials who went along with it. The lawyers who drafted the documents. The state party officers who certified fake slates. The elected Republicans who pressured election officials. Those people are the infrastructure of future coups. You can indict Trump, but if you don't address the entire apparatus of enablers, you've learned nothing.
Mar 2, 2026
This is what happens when you lose an election and refuse to accept it. Full stop. The Georgia RICO indictment is the right response - prosecute everyone involved. You want to know what terrifies Democrats? That if Trump wins in 2024, he might actually try this again and maybe get further because he now knows exactly where the vulnerabilities are. That's the real horror show.
Mar 2, 2026
The fake electors scheme is terrifying because it's *boring*. A mob burning the Capitol is something ordinary citizens recognize as wrong. But filing alternate paperwork with state election officials? That's the kind of thing that happens in administrative law classes. It requires understanding electoral procedures to even understand why it's bad. Autocrats love that. Give them procedural camouflage and they'll exploit it endlessly. We need electoral systems designed for bad faith actors, not good ones.
Mar 2, 2026
I keep coming back to something uncomfortable: Democrats won the Georgia lawsuit against the fake electors, but nobody got locked up. Nobody went to prison. And now we're talking about the Georgia RICO case like it's going to be the great reckoning. But trial is delayed, and every legal proceeding gets appealed to death. Meanwhile, Trump's polling numbers stay high, and his supporters view all of this as persecution. I don't know if prosecuting our way out of this works anymore.
Mar 2, 2026
I'm curious if the original poster can explain how this was 'plausible' or 'almost worked.' The Supreme Court has already ruled on similar stuff. State legislatures would have had to overturn certified results. Congress was never going to reject electoral votes from major states without evidence of fraud, and there wasn't any. The fake electors scheme relied on breaking multiple laws and every institutional actor doing something they knew was illegal. That's not 'plausible.' That's just not how our system works. Yes, we should strengthen the Electoral Count Reform Act. But let's not pretend this was ever close to success.
Mar 2, 2026
The most infuriating thing about the fake electors scheme is that it was both transparently illegal *and* almost worked. Like, we all understand now that a coordinated effort to submit fraudulent slates and pressure state officials to accept them constitutes fraud and conspiracy. The RICO charges in Georgia reflect that. But before it happened, there were enough gaps in the system that Trump's lawyers could argue with a straight face that it was legally ambiguous. That's the real problem. Not that Trump is uniquely evil - it's that we never needed explicit guardrails against obviously illegal things because no one had tried. Now we do. We need federal legislation clarifying that submitting fraudulent electors is a federal crime, that state officials who certify them face prosecution, and that Congress can't just accept whatever slates show up. We also need to revisit the Electoral Count Reform Act that Biden signed last year and make sure it's airtight. The January 6 mob was a symptom of the disease. The electors scheme was the disease itself.
Mar 2, 2026
This is exactly the kind of institutional decay that ends democracies. Not with a bang but with memo paper and signatures. We've been warning about this for years - no one listened because it's boring compared to Trump's tweets.
Mar 2, 2026
The fake electors scheme is literally a coup attempt dressed up in legal language. Full stop. If we're not treating this like the existential threat it is, we deserve what we get.
Mar 2, 2026
Hard disagree. You're treating seven submitted documents as some kind of near-success when they had zero chance legally. State legislatures set the rules for electors. Congress certified. The courts would have blocked it in seconds. This is the system *working*, not failing. The theatrics of it seem sinister but the actual mechanism held. Stop catastrophizing.
Mar 2, 2026
Remember when we all thought institutional norms were enough? Pepperidge Farm remembers. This whole thing exposes that we've been running American democracy on vibes and 'people won't actually do that.' Well, people did. Multiple state GOP parties coordinated to file fake documents. Multiple lawyers signed their names to fraudulent paperwork. And the only thing that stopped it was that a few people decided to follow the law anyway. That's not a robust system. That's a system held together by good faith. And if one party has decided good faith is for losers, we're in trouble.
Mar 2, 2026
You're right that it's more dangerous than the mob, but you're wrong about *why*. The mob was unpredictable and failed instantly. The electors scheme was systematic, nearly invisible, and only failed because a few people had integrity. That's scary.
Mar 2, 2026
Look, I think both-sidesing this is stupid, but let's be real about what we're actually worried about. The real danger isn't Trump - it's that we've designed a system where the *margin* between a coup working and failing is sometimes just one state official's conscience. The next person might not have Raffensperger's spine. The question isn't 'did Trump break things' but 'how do we fix the vulnerability he exposed?' Because someone will try again, and they might be smarter about it.
Mar 2, 2026
You're missing the bigger picture here. Yes, the electors scheme was methodical. Yes, it's a template. But templates only work if you have widespread buy-in from party infrastructure. And most of those officials *didn't* sign up. In Georgia, Arizona, Nevada - the electors schemes collapsed because GOP officials refused to participate. The system had enough redundancy to fail safely. That's actually the mechanism working. Could we make it stronger? Absolutely. But it's not like this was a close call.