After a judge's ruling, Arizona fake electors could be one step closer to real jail

They were part of a scheme involving other Republicans in other states that tried to overturn the results of a democratically decided presidential election.

There should be a price to pay for that.

It should involve prison.

At the very least they should be publicly exposed and vilified and, thanks to U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa, there’s a slightly better chance that will happen.

Judge Humetewa said the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection could subpoena the records of Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward.

Ward and her would-be band of bungling election thieves put together a phony electoral slate and sent it sent to Washington, D.C., attempting to cast Arizona’s ballots for Donald Trump instead of rightful winner Joe Biden.

When do we start the Hillary chant?

They’ve since tried to argue that the phony electors were only meant to be considered the real thing “in the event that the legal challenges to the Arizona results succeeded.”

Except that nothing in the document sent by certified mail to the U.S. Senate and National Archives spoke of legal challenges. Instead, the document falsely asserted that the 11 Arizona shills were the “duly elected and qualified” presidential electors, with no conditional language.

Just a backup: Ward asserts fake electors were only meant as a fail-safe

Lock.

Them.

Up.

You may recall how, in July, The New York Times reported on emails that displayed what the article describes as the “often slapdash efforts of advisers” to then President Trump used to try to subvert the election. The names of reactionary Republican notables like Arizona’s Kelli Ward and attorney Jack Wilenchik show up in the article.

The report quotes an email from Wilenchik to Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn that reads, “We (Arizona Republicans) would just be sending in ‘fake’ electoral votes to Pence so that ‘someone’ in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the ‘fake’ votes should be counted.”

Substituting  'alternative' for 'fake'

Imagine that.

Blatantly admitting that the electors were “fake.”

Kind of damning, don’t you think?

Perhaps that is why the report noted that Wilenchik sent a follow-up email saying, “‘alternative’ votes is probably a better term than ‘fake’ votes,” followed by a smiley face emoji.

It’s uncertain what Ward’s phone records will reveal.

The fact that Ward and her cohorts have tried so hard to keep them out of public view doesn’t bode well … for them. Ward is appealing the judges decision to the 9th Circuit, of course. Delay. Delay. Delay.

No matter how long it takes to get to the bottome of this we know for sure is that the phony electors and their crackpot scheme put our electoral process – our country – in danger.

An attempted breach of that process should have the same consequences that are facing the insurrectionists who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Real consequences.

Jail.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona fake electors could be one step closer to real jail