Talk:Trump fake electors plot

One Comment

Going to start this by expressing my love and appreciation for Wikipedia. I use it daily, for everything from a starting point for work related research tasks, to recreational learning about various historic or current topics. On everything from Napoleonic battles to particle physics. For context, this account was created in 2007, and I've been using Wikipedia since 2001.

Today I saw a ten minute news segment which touched on the "fake elector scheme," which I vaguely remember from the news cycle when it happened (which I was really into at the time -- I very closely followed the election on a day-to-day basis like many people) So, I hop on wikipedia to read about it in order to refresh my memory and maintain an informed opinion about reality.

To be 100% honest, this article reads like a propaganda piece for a particular narrative. Thank God for the talk page where I can get both sides of the issue.

This is clearly a polarizing subject with very strong opposing opinions, as the country is deeply divided on the fundamental question of whether Trump committed an insurrection with the help of rogue Republican state legislatures, or Biden committed a coup with the help of the Democrat party aligned intel agencies. I've never seen anything like this in life.

There was a time when Wikipedia was a neutral information repository, citing dispassionate news and textual sources, because in 2001 you could find sources that had not yet become overly politicized. There was a time when news desks for major networks lost money, on purpose, because the point of the news wasn't to make money -- it was for prestige. The money making arm of the corporation that owned the media company would fund the news desk, the news desk would win awards that fed back, or basically itself be an advertisement for the respectability of the network. The Internet changed this and the news suddenly was given a different role in the information ecosystem.

Today, everything has basically become yellow journalism, because the new business model in the social media age is everybody preaching to their niche choir setting up the other side with the greatest possible strawman to burn down. Or it has some other ideological agenda conditional to its funding. Following politics has always been a premier American pastime, so most of our lives have presently been roped into the daily cycle of confirmation bias, including quite sadly my beloved Wikpedia.

On this specific topic, the reality is the USA method for selecting the president is deliberately byzantine. I remember following Bush v Gore when it happened, and the legal conclusion of that affair was states have the right to send whatever electors they want, as long as the state follows its own constitution. And this fits with the design of the country at its founding to be a union of states. A state doesn't even need to have an public election, its own legislature could just decide who that state should vote for in the electoral college (which is what the electors are for). And this is exactly how it worked, until gradually states shifted to the current method, with the last holdout South Carolina stopped appointing electors in 1864. And ultimately, why Bush became president. If states have the right to appoint electors as they wish, then the outcome of the presidential election in a given state isn't actually material, unless it happens to be under state law. Hence, the outcome of the Bush v Gore, was that Florida had to follow its own election laws and nothing more. This is just facts.

So in a nutshell Trump lawyers apparently decided to mount a challenge by convincing legislatures in states which they thought (or claim they thought) election fraud happened to somehow appoint or send electors contrary the resultant outcome. And then, somehow force those states to either investigate the fraud, or simply appoint the electors (which again is how things worked in at least one state until 1864). It's not quite clear from the outside exactly what they were doing or their endgame, but it's something along these lines. Basically, lawyers either using or abusing the law, depending on who you ask.

Did it cross the line to be illegal? Does it rise to the level of fraud? Or, conversely, is it a legitimate constitutional check-and-balance on election fraud (whether or not you think it happened in this case, and whatever your feelings are about the current or previous president). These are questions for courts and constitutional scholars, not for talking heads on the media, decided by who has the most reach and can shout their opinions the loudest. And, sadly, the endless parade of people calling themselves constitutional lawyers and the like on those programs are just as bad. This needs to be decided by the US Supreme Court, or Congress.

The problem is, we are so politicized as a country, everyone wants to decide it in the court of public opinion, which is the court of talking points and political narratives. And even more unfortunately, Wikipedia and this page in particular seem to be roped into that arena, so when people like me hear the term "fake Trump electors" they come to this page and get one side of the story. That is how you manufacture consensus, as a propaganda tool.

Somewhat ironically, the language and wording of this page is so over-the-top biased and skewed to one side, it ends up being self-defeating. Because neutral people like me who come here just to learn about a thing they heard can see it for what it is. That is how I ended up on this talk page.

To be clear, I'm not blaming anyone or suggesting bad faith, since everyone has biases they aren't aware of, especially in this age, where nearly everything we read and hear has an agenda. So just writing out my honest opinion and reaction to the article as presented. Do with it as you wish.

Take care everyone! Lasati (talk) 23:04, 28 December 2023 (UTC)lasati

thanks for your thoughtful comments

Wikipedia is not a court, and thank goodness it's not Facebook. The encyclopedia relies on reliable secondary sources, and this article includes plenty of 'em. I hope you don't make a long statement and vanish, because I'd prefer you cite some specific examples to illustrate what you mean. soibangla (talk) 23:20, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

If someone is coming here to see if Biden committed a coup with the help of the Democrat party aligned intel agencies, they aren't going to be happy with our article and we shouldn't be trying to make them happy. – Muboshgu (talk) 02:59, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Bingo! -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:01, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Lasati, it's all well and good to be well-informed by knowing both sides of the story, but in this case one must choose, because one side is lying and the other side is telling the truth. We do not choose a false balance here. At Wikipedia we use reliable sources, and they all back the version described in this article. They describe the facts and the attempts to steal the election from its rightful winner. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:01, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Valjean, any claim that one side is lying and the other side is telling the truth is just partisan bias. It is never the case that one side is totally perfect and the other side is fully imperfect. Claiming this is mere propaganda and far from the truth.

Similarly, the term 'reliable sources' is itself propaganda. The people whose political views are dominant at Wikipedia have chosen to blindly trust sources that regularly makes mistakes and that have certain biases. When the 'quality newspapers' published the falsehood that it was proven that Covid could not have come from a lab and then suddenly chose to amend their articles when Biden said that it was a possibility, their articles simply couldn't have been reliable before and after the change. One of these must have been false. After all, they didn't react to a sudden major scientific revelation or such. They reacted to a social change within their ingroup, where the idea suddenly became acceptable after Biden endorsed it.

Frankly, I see your comment as (weak) evidence in favor of Lasati's claim, especially as you claim on your user page that: "my fingerprints are still in our most important and fundamental policies and guidelines." When a person who comes across as being very partisan makes such a claim, I see it as a red flag that those policies may be quite partisan as well. Aapjes (talk) 12:11, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Aapjes, which 'quality newspapers' published the falsehood that it was proven that Covid could not have come from a lab? soibangla (talk) 15:47, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

The Washington Post for one. As you can see in their redaction, they admit themselves that they told falsehoods. Here is the original if you want to read the falsehoods.

Wikipedia itself claims that WaPo is a "newspaper of record."

The New York Times did something similar. They dismiss the consideration of the possibility of a lab outbreak as a fringe theory and argue that even considering the theory as possible is a conspiracy theory, which logically means that they claim that is extremely likely to be false, in their opinion.

However, the NYT is prone to stealth editing, to conceal the evidence of their mistakes. They typically do not even publish a note of correction. So the current article on their site is far different. Aapjes (talk) 18:27, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

You're correct that there is nothing illegal if a state decides to change it's laws so that they don't hold elections and the legislator decides who to give the votes to. But currently all these states have laws on the book that say they decide the electoral votes with a democratic vote. So creating false documents where the electoral votes go to some other person is in fact against the states' laws. Editor16365 (talk) 17:29, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Electoral College rules

@soibangla Regarding this diff where you deleted the entire section on Electoral College procedure in Background.

This entire article focuses on people alleged to have crafted a plot to circumvent and exploit the Electoral College procedure. It makes multiple references to minutia of Electoral College procedure, such as certificates of ascertainment, the Electoral Count Act, the deadlines of certification, the differences between authentic and alternate certificates, the vice president's role in counting certificates, the delivery of electoral ballots, exploiting contingent elections by lowering electoral count thresholds, etc. This entire controversy stems from how the electoral college process in American works.

It would be clearly useful to have a section that lays the relevant procedure out in a coherent manner so that readers can understand what the proper procedure is, how it contrasted with the fake electors scheme, and what elements were exploited to develop it. RS have made such explainers themselves when covering various portions of Trump's fake electors scheme, giving background context on the relevant electoral college procedure that it relates to. I'm struggling to comprehend the standard you are using to determine that this is not useful for the article, but that it is necessary to include lengthy content on news reports of people who may or may not be connected to the actual plan making comments and communications of undetermined notability. KiharaNoukan (talk) 09:48, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

No it would not be useful to have that bloat in the article. An encyclopedia is not a 5th-grader's civics textbook. Zaathras (talk) 11:55, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm more than open to suggestions for edits on what to prune to include. The idea that there should be no explainers, at least on certificates of ascertainment and related EC processes, sounds ridiculous. This is the English encyclopedia, not the Americans only encyclopedia, and the electoral processes here are found nowhere else in the world and are not intuitive on their own. KiharaNoukan (talk) 17:36, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

The first two paragraphs of the deleted section contain the most directly relevant background (although the second paragraph contains unnecessary details about certificates of ascertainment), and parts of the third are also relevant for explaining certification. Helpful Raccoon (talk) 02:55, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

plot

I've never liked the term plot. can we change it to scheme? soibangla (talk) 04:17, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

soibangla already decided. rootsmusic (talk) 01:05, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

prosecution cases

Currently, the Prosecutions section is a narrative. Since there are several prosecutions now, I suggest adding a table for case summaries. Alternatively, the Prosecutions section can move (and add) to 2021 United States Electoral College vote count#Aftermath. rootsmusic (talk) 19:11, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

annotated timeline

Since this article is a narrative overview of the plot masterminded by several of Trump's lawyers, I suggest adding an annotated timeline as a supporting article. (Example: Planning of the January 6 United States Capitol attack is supported by Timeline of the January 6 United States Capitol attack.) Such an annotated timeline for this plot would split-off events from and reduce the length of the embedded timeline in Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election. (One reference is Just Security's timeline.) rootsmusic (talk) 03:09, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I still think a timeline for the Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election article would make more sense here, per my comment on that talk page. At the moment this article is around 5,600, so per WP:SIZERULE, it's length alone does not justify division or trimming, whereas the other is 21,000 and is in dire need of it. I'm also assuming not all of the November 2020 to January 2021 timeline is directly related to fake electors plot, so splitting the timeline up would make it incomplete. Whereas all of the Trump plot timeline is/should be part of the attempts to overthrow timeline. CommunityNotesContributor (talk) 15:32, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not implying that this article needs splitting. I suggest spinning-off into a separate article as an annotated timeline: 1. this article's sections for Planning and Events in individual states, 2. relevant events in Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election. In the second article's embedded timeline, the plot's events are embedded within the following subsections:

• "Fake" electors.
• Trump's attempt to pressure state officials: 12/4/2020, 12/5/2020.
• Supreme Court petitions: 11/21/2020, late 12/2020.
• Planning for Congress to overturn the election on January 6: 12/21/2020.
• "Pence Card" conspiracy: early 1/2021 (Eastman memos#First memorandum), 1/5/2021.
• December timeline: 12/13/2020.
• Pressure on Justice Department: 12/28/2020.
• Ellis memos: 12/31/2020, 1/5/2021.
• January 2021: 1/1/2021,
• Gohmert v. Pence: 12/27/2020.
• Calls with state officials: 1/2/2021.
• Preparations by chief of staff: early 1/2021, 1/5/2021.
• More pressure on Pence: 1/5/2021, 1/6/2021.
• Later developments: more dates.

rootsmusic (talk) 17:22, 3 June 2024 (UTC)