You may be hearing the phrase “fake electors scheme” a lot lately—in fact, just this week, 16 people in Michigan were charged with a slew of felonies because of it. The “scheme” has also been under investigation by the Department of Justice since last year. But what exactlyis it?

It’s a plan allegedly devised by Donald Trump, his lawyers, and his advisers to overturn the 2020 election results and keep Trump in the White House for another term, despite Joe Biden winning the general election.

The details are a bit convoluted. We’re here to fill you in.

Part I: Seed Doubt

In the months leading up to the 2020 election, there were signs that Trump might not accept an election loss. When asked, Trump wouldn’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power. Instead, he seeded doubt in the integrity of the U.S. voting system, specifically mail-in ballots. “I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots. And the ballots are a disaster. Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful—there won’t be a transfer, frankly, there’ll be a continuation,” said Trump. Around that time, a group of bipartisan experts had produced a white paper laying out scenarios of how Trump could react to an election loss, predicting a constitutional crisis. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders also warned the country of a “nightmare scenario” where Trump refused to step down from the presidency despite losing the election.

Sure enough, as it became clear in the days and weeks following the Nov. 3, 2020, election that Biden was going to become the next U.S. president, Trump’s camp began to target seven battleground states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—where Biden had won. According to evidence presented during the House Jan. 6 committee hearings, Trump adviser Kenneth Chesebro was the one to initially suggest this plan, and he pulled in attorneys John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and other Trump allies like chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn to help execute it.

Part II: Lawsuits and Demands for Recounts

Trump and his allies launched 62 legal challenges in battleground states. But 61 failed; one Pennsylvania judge ruled that voters couldn’t go back and “cure” their ballots, if they had failed to provide proper identification, within three days after the election. The decision didn’t change Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania.

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Undeterred, the Trump camp asked for the support of local Republican officials, who are in charge of facilitating their local elections. Trump infamously called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and demanded he “find 11,780 votes,” the exact number needed to win over Biden. Trump also personally contacted the speaker of the Pennsylvania House, Bryan Cutler, to request his help in reversing his state’s election results.

Giuliani also addressed the Georgia Legislature in an attempt to convince them that Georgia’s election results had been skewed by fraud. Meadows traveled to Georgia to watch an audit of absentee ballots and sent the Department of Justice multiple emails alleging voter fraud and requesting investigations be started.

Part III: Assemble Electors 

Before an election, political parties in each state choose their electors—the people who will represent them in the Electoral College, should their candidate win. Most states award all of their electors to the party that earns the most votes, except for Nebraska and Maine, which send a proportional distribution of electors from both parties.

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On the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, all the electors gather in their respective states to officially enter their votes for president. They record the vote on an official certificate, called the Certificate of Ascertainment, which they send to Washington, D.C.

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The Constitution does not actually requireelectors to vote according to their state’s popular vote, but since the winning party got to choose them in advance, it’s pretty rare for them not to. Some states have also passed laws that penalize “faithless electors.”

This process usually runs smoothly, but there have been instances of trouble.

In 1960, when Sen. John F. Kennedy was running against Vice President Richard Nixon, the race was so tight that the Kennedy campaign demanded a recount in Hawaii, despite Nixon winning the state. As the recount took place, both campaigns organized their chosen slates of electors and sent signed certificates to Congress. Once the recount finished, Hawaii flipped for Kennedy, which then sent a second round of official electors and a new certificate to Washington, D.C.

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As vice president, Nixon was also president of the Senate, and faced three different slates of electors, but chose to honor Kennedy’s.

The Trump campaign argued this set a precedent for them to object to states’ election results and put forth their own slates of electors. Though their excuse for doing so—the claims of voter fraud—had been widely disproven, the Trump campaign allegedly played a hand in assembling a hodgepodge of local Republicans in each of the seven battleground states to serve as fake electors.

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Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel testified before the Jan. 6 Commission that Trump called her asking for the RNC’s help in gathering pro-Trump electors across the country. Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers also said Trump pressured him to reconvene the Arizona Legislature and recall electors who were going to vote for Biden (Bowers refused).

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At the time, however, the government’s top cybersecurity agency refuted Trump’s allegations of widespread voter fraud. And Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, rejected the claims as “bullshit.” A Department of Justice investigation completed in 2022 also ultimately found no evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election.

Even states that were more forgiving to Trump could not stand by his claims. The state of Georgia went through three rounds of recounts and Biden remained the clear winner every time. The same goes for Arizona, which held a hand recount of 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County and found Biden actually gained 99 more votes.

Although many Republican officials across all seven states refused to bend to Trump’s demands, Trump supporters in all seven battleground states, who had no authority to act as state electors, still signed fake certificates declaring Trump as their state’s winner and sent them to the National Archives.

Part IV: Convince the Vice President

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All of these efforts would be futile unless the vice president would play along. On Jan. 6, 2021, Mike Pence, in his capacity as president of the Senate, was scheduled to preside over the receiving and counting of electoral ballots. It’s mostly a ceremonial role, but Trump and his allies were convinced Pence had the authority to throw out the legitimate electoral votes for Biden and only count Trump’s fake ones, though the law does not explicitly grant him that authority.

The pressure campaign culminated in the days before the attack on the Capitol. Testimony from the House Jan. 6 committee revealed that Eastman, one of Trump’s lead lawyers, told Pence directly in an Oval Office meeting, “I’m here to request that you reject the electors.”

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Pence did not oblige Eastman’s request, and days later, on Jan. 6, an angry mob of Trump supporters chanted “Hang Mike Pence.” Trump allegedly said the vice president “deserves it.”

In the end, the fake electors were not considered in Congress—despite an aide for Republican Sen. Ron Johnson attempting to hand them to Pence minutes before the electoral vote count started—and soon enough the world learned of Trump’s plan.

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The Aftermath

American Oversight, a progressive watchdog group, reported on this plan in March 2021 when, through a records request, they got their hands on copies of phony electoral vote certificates from the seven battleground states. Almost a year later, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow also revealed the scheme on her show.

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Then came the House Jan. 6 committee, which, through a series of public hearings, revealed some pretty shocking details. For example, when Bowers, Arizona’s governor, testified, he alleged that Republican Rep. Andy Biggs called him the morning of Jan. 6 to try to convince him to sign on to a fake slate of electors, a request he refused.

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The committee voted to refer Trump to the DOJ on at least four criminal charges, handing over all of its evidence and transcripts. That’s when the department decided to appoint special counsel Jack Smith to investigate whether any person or entity unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 election or the Electoral College vote certification. And now that Trump has received a target letter in the investigation, it seems another indictment is going to come any day now.

Meanwhile, states are conducting their own investigations into Trump’s attempts to interfere with the election. Atlanta-area District Attorney Fani Willis has been conducting a criminal investigation into Trump’s actions in Georgia surrounding the fake electors scheme, and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is also exploring a possible criminal investigation.

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