Perpetrators of the plot
On Dec. 14, 2020, six Republican leaders who were posing as electors gathered in Carson City to announce they had sent votes to the National Archives declaring Donald Trump the winner of Nevada’s balloting in the 2020 presidential election.
Those six individuals were: Michael McDonald, the Nevada GOP chairman; James DeGraffenreid, a national committeeman and a district-level delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention; Durward James Hindle III, vice chair of the Nevada Republican Committee; Jesse Law, chairman of the Clark County Republican Party; Shawn Meehan, founder of Guard the Constitution Project; and Eileen Rice of the Douglas County Republicans.
Also appearing during the announcement were two Republican leaders who were posing as alternate electors: Nye County Republican Central Committee Chairman Joe Burdzinski and former Nevada GOP legislator James Marchant, now a Republican candidate for Nevada secretary of state.
The recent revelation that Republican Party leaders in Nevada sent fake electoral votes to Washington, D.C., after the 2020 presidential election demands an aggressive response from authorities and voters alike.
These illegitimate electors must be investigated for election fraud, and Nevadans must reject any GOP candidate who doesn’t condemn the party leaders’ actions and recognize Joe Biden as the duly elected president of the United States.
As uncovered in news reports, the Nevada leaders’ actions were part of a scheme in several states to cheat millions of Americans out of their votes in order to gain a fraudulent election win for Donald Trump. It’s a stunning example of how far GOP leaders in Nevada and elsewhere were willing to go to sabotage the popular vote.
The Nevada Republicans involved, despite no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud in the state, sent phony electoral certificates that were to be submitted to Congress as part of a scheme to give participating GOP congressional leaders a mechanism to deny the rightful electors and steal the election. Had these fake certifications been accepted, Biden would have been defrauded of the six electoral votes he legitimately won in Nevada by defeating Trump by some 33,000 votes here.
Similar efforts, reportedly spearheaded by Trump’s henchman lawyer Rudy Giuliani and conforming to written plans that have been uncovered, also took place in Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and New Mexico, according to news reports.
Had the conspirators been successful, the will of Nevadans and of American voters as a whole would have been subverted. Democracy would have been shattered.
Nevada voters should be enraged at these state party leaders whose attempted election fraud sought to deny Nevada’s votes.
In a statement at the time, the fake electors acknowledged that the courts had thrown out lawsuits they had filed alleging election fraud, and they were still going to send the false certificates.
“A court of law has failed to meaningfully evaluate the evidence and our law enforcement agencies and government officials have failed to investigate,” the statement said. “This left our electors no choice but to send their votes for President Trump to Congress to make a determination as to who is the rightful victor of Nevada between the dueling votes.”
As it turns out, for all their braying about fraud, the party leaders were the ones committing it — corrupt, highly organized and on a scale unlike anything the nation has ever seen. And let’s also not forget that when the rare case of “traditional” voter fraud in the 2020 election was uncovered, it was committed by a Republican. Las Vegas resident Donald “Kirk” Hartle pleaded guilty in November to voting with his deceased wife’s ballot.
Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske — a Republican — certified the results and assured Nevadans that the outcome was legitimate. Lawsuits filed by Trump’s legal foot soldiers were thrown out like the junk they were, and no credible evidence has ever been offered. And under Nevada state law, electors are required to vote for the winners of the popular vote in the state.
Assessing the plotters’ actions, Gov. Steve Sisolak put it well in a statement issued by his office: “While the governor is not a lawyer, he believes if you file a document with blatantly false statements with a government agency, that is a crime, or ought to be a crime.”
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said that while he could neither confirm nor deny whether an investigation into the scheme was underway, he was well aware of the situation. We’d encourage him to join his counterparts in Michigan and New Mexico in asking federal prosecutors to investigate the fake electors. We also commend the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection for issuing subpoenas to two of the Nevadans involved – Michael McDonald, the chair of the state party, and James DeGraffenreid, a Republican national committeeman.
Now, sensible Republicans — and we know many of them are out there — should demand a housecleaning and eject the anti-democracy forces in their party. Amid the uncovering of the fake-elector plot and credible reports of violent extremist groups like the Proud Boys gaining an increasing presence in the party, the state GOP needs a thorough disinfecting.
Disgracefully, though, the party’s top candidates have been utterly silent about the phony electors. That includes former Nevada attorney general and current U.S. Senate candidate Adam Laxalt, who once swore an oath to protect the constitutions of the United States and Nevada. Now he says nothing about an assault on the vote.
Nor do gubernatorial candidates Dean Heller, Joe Lombardo and John Lee, all of whom have taken similar oaths.
To these candidates and others we ask, where are your condemnations? Where are your democratic values? Where is your honor? Where is your backbone when your state needs you to take a principled stand? Stand out from the crowd by standing for something larger and more important than your political ambitions, for heaven’s sake.
This is a moral test, graded on a pass-or-fail basis with no gray area. You’re either on the side of an honest vote or on the side of an organized attempt at fraud.
Unless and until these candidates speak out about the plot, Nevada voters should remember their silence. It speaks loudly about the candidates’ character — or lack of it.