Arizona’s fake electors deserve a full legal reckoning, not a procedural escape hatch

It would be a lot easier for everyone to forget about the fake electors who schemed to keep Donald Trump in power. But I’m glad Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes doesn’t give up that easily.

Mayes has said she’s undeterred after the Arizona Supreme Court dealt a blow to her felony indictments against the 11 Arizona Republicans who falsely claimed they could cast electoral votes and seven other conspirators tied to Trump’s campaign on charges including conspiracy, fraudulent schemes and forgery.

Lower courts ruled that the indictments were improper because state prosecutors failed to give the grand jury a copy of the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which the accused said absolved them of any wrongdoing. The high court declined to consider Mayes’ appeal, which means she must take it back to a grand jury or end the whole thing.

While the ruling is a huge setback for Mayes, it is not a vindication for the fake electors who tried to overturn the 2020 election.

Former President Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes against Trump, who has never accepted that defeat — and is still peddling conspiracies about how the election was “stolen” from him at every chance.   

The fake electors, among them then-Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward, didn’t just amplify Trump’s lies but actually signed and submitted paperwork to the U.S. Congress claiming he had won.

Don’t minimize, excuse or forget their actions

Had this scheme succeeded, it would have been the end of our democratic republic. The system held only because lawyers, judges, election officials and us — the American people — stopped the assault against the transfer of power.

Why should the fake electors get away with it?

The late former Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich didn’t pursue anything against the fake electors. Mayes, a Democrat, narrowly won in 2022 and took the case to a grand jury, which returned an indictment in 2024.

Even though the indictments have been tossed, Arizona courts haven’t cleared the fake electors.

Nor have they ruled that their conduct was lawful.

And the courts haven’t addressed the core allegations against the Arizona electors and others, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

What the courts decided is a technicality

The Electoral Count Act of 1887 governs the certification of presidential elections. Defense lawyers argued that the law allowed multiple slates of electors to be submitted to Congress.

Congress amended that law in 2022 to make clear that a state may submit only one slate of electors, certified by the governor.

The ruling against Mayes’ case was a procedural one, not a moral or legal exoneration. The courts have yet to rule on the substance of what the fake electors did.

Mayes could walk away and perhaps score some political points with moderate Republicans in this year’s midterm elections.

But doing so would send exactly the wrong message. It would justify organized attempts to nullify lawful votes.  

Who are Arizona’s fake electors? We must name each of them

•     Kelli Ward, former chair of the Arizona Republican Party, and her husband, Michael.
•     State Republican Sen. Jake Hoffman.
•     Former Sen. Anthony Kern
•     Tyler Bowyer, chief operating officer of Turning Point USA
•     Nancy Cottle, a longtime Republican activist
•     James Lamon, an unsuccessful 2022 U.S. Senate candidate
•     Robert Montgomery, former chair of the Cochise County Republican Committee
•     Samuel Moorhead, former chair of the Gila County Republican Party
•     Gregory Safsten, former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party
•     Loraine Pellegrino, former president of Ahwatukee Republican Women, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false document

It’s also important to remember that Trump issued federal pardons to the fake electors, but those pardons don’t apply to state charges.

A full legal reckoning against the fake electors is necessary to affirm this country still believes in the rule of law. Without that reckoning, the core question would be hanging over our state and country forever.