Five of the six Nevada Republican Party officials accused of submitting “fake elector” ballots in a scheme to swing the 2020 presidential election for Donald Trump will be delegates to this summer’s Republican National Convention; two of them have also been nominated to be among the party’s presidential electors for Nevada.
Nevada GOP chairman Michael McDonald and vice chairman Jim Hindle, Republican Party National Committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid, Clark County Republican chairman Jesse Law, and Eileen Rice all face state charges related to their participation in the elector scheme, and all five will be delegates to the convention in Milwaukee where former President Donald Trump is expected to be anointed the party’s nominee for president. Additionally, McDonald and Law are among six Republicans nominated by the party to be Nevada’s presidential electors this winter.
The delegate selections and presidential elector nominations were secured at the Nevada Republican Party’s state convention this past weekend.
The five, along with Shawn Meehan, are charged in Clark County District Court with offering a false instrument for filing and uttering a forged instrument, felonies that carry penalties of up to four or five years in prison. Trial is set for January 2025.
Nevada Democrats were quick to react, criticizing both the state GOP and Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, who is expected to lead the Nevada delegation to the Milwaukee convention.
“It should not come as a shock to anyone that Nevada Republicans nominated indicted fake electors to be their 2024 presidential electors,” said Nevada State Democratic Party spokesperson Tai Sims. “Republicans have spent the last four years relentlessly spreading dangerous election conspiracy theories that threaten the basic functions of democracy but despite Joe Lombardo vetoing legislation that would have protected electors. Joe Lombardo — as the head of the Nevada GOP — should be held accountable for his role in enabling election denial.”
About a dozen Republicans met Dec. 14, 2020, in Carson City and conducted a ceremony in which the six GOP members signed a document “certifying” Nevada’s six electoral votes for Trump, even though Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the state by about 30,000 votes. The Nevada Republican Party sent the document — titled “Certificate of the Votes of the 2020 Electors from Nevada” — to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., with McDonald’s name listed with the return address.
Republicans in a handful of states went through a similar process — all with the same misleading and potentially criminal logic.
The meeting of fake electors, here and in the other five contested states, had no legal standing.
Nevada’s real electors had already certified the state’s election results that same day in a remote ceremony, rightfully awarding all six of Nevada’s electoral votes to Biden.
Electors and their alternates under Nevada law are selected by each of the major parties at their state conventions in the same calendar year of presidential elections. Nevada Democrats will nominate their delegates May 18 for this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Under state law, “a nominee for presidential elector or an alternate may not serve as a presidential elector unless the nominee for presidential elector or the alternate signs a pledge that reads:
“If selected for the position of presidential elector, I agree to serve as such and to vote only for the nominees for President and Vice President of the political party or the independent candidates who received the highest number of votes in this State at the general election.”
McDonald, Law and the others in 2020 didn’t follow this standard in participating in the fake elector scheme. And they didn’t hide it, with the party saying in a social media post that its “brave electors” stood up for what was right.
Defense attorneys led by McDonald’s lawyer, Richard Wright, contend that Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford improperly brought the case in Clark County instead of Carson City, the state capital, and failed to present evidence to the grand jury that would have exonerated their clients. They also argue there is insufficient evidence and that their clients had no intent to commit a crime.
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