Today I Learned

Yea, stop the steal was real, but being perpetrated by Republicans and conservatives, and Americans and its political institutions actually did stop the steal trump and his campaign officials attempted.

Like straight up. Straight up forgery and electoral fraud, even more direct than that Georgia call.

My head is spinning about it

Keep in mind that their goal was and continues to be discrediting the democratic process. They are willing to give up short term gains for long term power.

They have, imo, successfully convinced enough people that elections cannot be trusted. It's why we need more and more people to be election officials but the threat of violence against them is making it challenging.

It's always projection with them. Which is why I wanted to see investigations into some of the states where they won instead of it all being focused where they lost and claimed fraud was happening. Also battleground states they lost but didn't call fraud on.

Fraud and Forgery are by themselves a Crime (I believe even in the US) even without the whole conspiracy to defraud the elections.

Surelly those who committed them can already be prosecuted and convicted if found guilty?!

I was pretty heartened to find out the national archives inspected and then rejected all of the false certificates sent in, so I'm going with the glass half full thing here.

I would have liked some convictions as well, but it looks like Michigan is looking to prosecute people, if I understand correctly. I don't know. It seems like the whole prosecution of the false elector plot is still going on.

If they aren't being prosecuted it's because they have turned state's evidence against Trump & his crew of stupid #fascists.

He should be facing far more serious legal consequences, suffice to say. Rather than this piecemeal, "ooo, maybe we can get him on a technicality" bullshit. If a democracy is incapable of even protecting itself from such a hamfisted coup, how could it hope to protect itself from one orchestrated by a person who isn't pants on head stupid.

The current right wing talking point is its not fraud because it wasn't successful lol. Even if it was successful, it still wasn't fraud because trump believed the election was stolen from him. Oh and state legislator can pick any electors they want at anytime.

It's ridiculous

Only if you're poor!

Yes, it's one of the many things Trump and his collaborators are being prosecuted for.

IANAL, but yeah. And we should push our reps to ensure that the law is applied fairly.

All those us shenanigans are quite strange. They seem to be allowed to do pretty much anything with no consequences whatsoever. Apparently the us has no laws governing what republican politicians are allowed to do.

The Michigan false electors were indeed criminally charged and they are going through the process now https://michiganadvance.com/2023/12/13/michigan-fake-electors-back-in-court-as-state-elections-director-testifies/

They have been arrested and charged and released on their own recognizance which is much cheaper and less onerous than detaining someone who is not a flight risk in jail until they plead or go to trial.

As of now, if memory serves, pretty much all of the fake electors in Michigan have pleaded out for reduced sentences and cooperation agreements. There are some in Georgia who are still holding out to go to trial, but that's a completely different case brought by the state as opposed to by the federal government.

You really need to be careful about believing everything you read on Lemmy, especially when it comes to legal information.

Let's just say that if there were a Lemmy Bar Association, you wouldn't even have to be particularly literate in order to pass the exam and become a member. Lemmy's idea of US law is basically whatever some rando thinks makes sense. It's pretty comical sometimes.

I think that's why if I heard rumblings about this before, I didn't clock it as so monumental because what happened is so absurd.

Trump is guilty of insurrection and rape, and those are a couple flagpole reasons in my head that he shouldn't be any sort of political candidate, but he also directly committed electoral fraud in that Georgia phone call and apparently directed Republicans to mail in forged election certificates.

It's just so crazy that I didn't think he and his campaign committed straight up, direct electoral forgery and electoral fraud in multiple states, which they apparently did.

"The bigger the lie", I guess.

It was a multi-prong attack. The goal was to generate uncertainty in the validity of results certified by the states, and create a justification for Mike Pence to delay certification.

Run a search on mike pence delay certification fake electors and take your pick.

Brilliant!

Ah, but you see they are white Christian conservative Republicans.

So, no.

I don't think I'd say that, I think the fact that all of the false certificates were immediately flagged and rejected is a good sign.

I think it's a lot more odd that the matter isn't being treated more seriously by the authorities, but I wouldn't say that some recent development indicating a collapse, the aw, shucks recognition of "oh they were just trying" seems oddly within the American tradition.