Five Pennsylvania Republicans who signed on to Donald Trump’s 2020 slate of alternate electors are back this year — and some say that, under the right circumstances, they’re prepared to do it again.
The returnees range from a prominent Lehigh Valley election denier who funded fruitless efforts to uncover fraud in at least three battleground states to county-level GOP officials who, despite scrutiny of their decision four years ago, have maintained their party positions.
They will join a group of 14 others chosen by their state party to gather in Harrisburg on Dec. 17 and cast Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes for Trump should he emerge the election’s victor — and, perhaps, even if he doesn’t.
But they draw key distinctions between their actions in 2020 and those of their counterparts from other battleground states — namely language they included in their submission to Congress saying they were putting themselves forward as rightful electors only in the event that a court ruling overturned the state’s results.
That caveat helped save them from criminal charges electors faced in states such as Arizona and Wisconsin, and several of this year’s Trump electors specifically cited that caveat in explaining why they wouldn’t hesitate to do the same thing, if necessary, this year.
“I will stand on what I did in 2020,” said Andy Reilly, a Republican National Committee member and returning Trump elector from Delaware County, who was subpoenaed by the FBI to testify about the electors scheme in Washington. “It cost me. But I think that if there’s lawsuits or any questions about the result that those lawsuits could change, it’s advisable — for Democrats and Republicans — if they have to meet the deadline, to meet as contingent electors.”
The 2020 election — and Trump’s efforts to overturn it — cast a spotlight on the role of presidential electors, largely honorary positions typically granted to party loyalists who, up until that year, had conducted their duties without drawing much public attention.
As Trump and his allies sought to stop congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s victory four years ago with baseless claims of widespread fraud, they turned to GOP electors from Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania to falsely attest to Congress that he’d won.
Four years later, lawmakers have enacted reforms, giving some reason for optimism that a repeat of 2020 won’t happen. And safeguards that stopped Trump and his allies from succeeding that year remain in place.
But with Trump again signaling he is prepared to contest the election results should he lose, experts say the inclusion of roughly a dozen figures from 2020’s fake elector plot on GOP slates from battleground states this year still gives cause for concern.
At the very least, said Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth University, the GOP’s continued embrace of electors who aided Trump’s efforts to subvert the democratic process shows just how entrenched doubt about the 2020 outcome remains within the Republican Party.
“We’re in a situation where Republicans are saying, ‘Heads I win, tails you lose,’” he said. “They demand the legitimacy of their wins be accepted, and reject the legitimacy of elections in which they’re defeated. That’s not a stable position for democracy.”
In Pennsylvania, Reilly is returning as an elector alongside four others who were on the alternate slate including Bucks County GOP chair Pat Poprik, Lehigh Valley election denier Bill Bachenberg, Warren County GOP committee member Ash Khare, and Pennsylvania Republican vice chair Bernadette Comfort.
A crucial caveat
Still, Trump’s returning presidential electors in Pennsylvania are quick to distinguish themselves.
In interviews with The Philadelphia Inquirer, three said they felt vindicated by choices they made in 2020 that differentiated them from the fake electors from other states. That year, Trump’s electors in Pennsylvania and New Mexico were the only battleground slates to condition their electoral vote submissions on a court invalidating the results in their state. No such court rulings ever came.
It vexed Trump allies, who had hoped for a more forceful assertion of victory.
But several of this year’s Pennsylvania returnees cited that clause as the reason they wouldn’t hesitate to sign on as alternate electors again should there be lingering doubts about the validity of a Kamala Harris win come December.
“If President Trump felt the same way, I’m very open to a process so people have the right to look further into something if they felt it was something that was unfair,” said Jim Worthington, a Trump elector from Bucks County who was not on the 2020 slate. “Once that’s vetted and looked at and (a) court rules … then you abide by what that ruling is.”
Poprik, the chair of the Bucks County GOP and a Trump elector from 2020 who was selected again this year, said she would also be willing to sign a document similar to the one she and her colleagues sent to Congress in 2020. She viewed the document as a safeguard to ensure Trump electors would be recognized if the results were overturned by litigation.
“I think anybody would,” she said.
Jondavid Longo — the mayor of Slippery Rock, in Western Pennsylvania, who spoke at the Butler rally where Trump was nearly assassinated this summer — is serving as an elector for the former president for the first time this year. Though Longo said he was unsure whether he’d sign on as a contingent elector, he described 2020’s “Pennsylvania caveat” as an important distinction.
“I pray there aren’t any improprieties or fraud,” he said. “I think every American in the electorate has the right to question authority and question what’s being told to them by a system that time and again has proven to show corruption, favoritism, specifically to the left-leaning side, and that’s especially true in Pennsylvania.”
Only one of this year’s Trump electors who spoke to The Inquirer definitively ruled out signing a contingent document purporting to represent Pennsylvania’s electoral votes.
Rob Gleason, a former GOP state chair who has served as an elector in several previous elections, had originally been tapped as a Trump elector in 2020 but backed out once talk turned toward organizing alternate electors that year.
“When they called me and said we’re having a meeting, I said, ‘I’m not going to any meeting. We lost,’” Gleason said. “The way I always looked at elections, you have to prove fraud before an election takes place. It’s too late after.”
This year, he said, his mind’s once again made up.
“If we win, I’ll go” to Harrisburg on Dec. 17, he said. “If we lose, I won’t.”
Efforts to prevent another fake elector plot
Legal experts say the circumstances of 2024 differ significantly from those in 2020, making it less likely that any Trump effort to organize alternate slates of electors would gain traction.
Chief among them, Harris, rather than former Vice President Mike Pence, will preside over the congressional certification of this year’s election in January 2025. There’s little chance she would credit alternate elector slates that would overturn a victory for her campaign.
In 2020, Pence ultimately refused to credit the slates put forward by Trump and his allies, but the former president had hoped to pressure the vice president into doing so.
Since then, Congress has passed reforms to increase the number of House and Senate members needed to raise objections to a state’s electors, making it harder for lawmakers to object to election results. The changes also established a clearer time frame for legal challenges to the election and certification of results.
State executives now must certify the election six days before presidential electors meet to cast their votes. This year, that means Gov. Josh Shapiro must certify electors by Dec. 11. Six days later, the electors for Pennsylvania’s chosen candidate will meet to officially cast the state’s Electoral College votes.
The law states that Congress must treat the electoral slate appointed by the state executive as “conclusive” unless a court ruling overturns the result before the slate meets.
“The goal is to prevent any uncertainty by the date the electors meet and therefore prevent the need for filing any alternate slates whether you think it’s legitimate … or you think it’s not,” said Derek Muller, an election law expert at the University of Notre Dame.
David Becker, founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, suggested that efforts to form an alternate slate this year, even with a caveat like the one Trump’s Pennsylvania electors included in 2020, could result in prosecution.
“If fake electors choose to ignore those certifications and ascertainment, they will be doing so at their own risk, and I hope they have good counsel,” he said.
Even one of Trump’s alternate 2020 Pennsylvania electors cast doubt on the prospect that a similar scenario could play out again.
Charlie Gerow, a longtime GOP political consultant who is not returning as a Trump elector this year, said the 2020 vote presented a number of unique aspects, including the state’s first widespread use of mail voting, that left it uniquely prone to uncertainty and litigation — circumstances he believes are not likely to be repeated again.
“What happened in 2020 was a specific response to a specific set of circumstances,” he said. “There were court cases — numerous still going on — and we felt it was important to have a fail-safe in the event that a court ruled that the Biden electors were not properly chosen. I don’t think that will happen in 2024.”
‘Essentially worthless paperwork’
Muller, the Notre Dame expert, cautioned that no amount of reform and changed circumstances can stop a losing candidate intent upon ignoring the law from trying once again.
Trump has already repeated false claims of election fraud on the campaign trail and signaled his intention to contest the results should he lose in November. Both parties are bracing for a barrage of postelection litigation, including both legitimate and frivolous claims.
And some members of Trump’s elector slate this year — including former GOP Senate candidate Carla Sands and Lehigh County businessman Bachenberg — have continued to express doubts about the legitimacy of Biden’s victory in 2020.
Reilly, the Trump elector from Delaware County, said he worries that, despite the new deadlines, the election’s outcome could remain tied up in court by the time electors must convene on Dec. 17. And he and his colleagues might once again face the choice of signing on to an alternate slate this year, he said.
“Hopefully, the vote can be counted quicker. Hopefully, the courts can expedite any legal challenges,” he said. “If not, there ought to be agreement (that) the other side votes as contingent.”
But Muller expressed confidence that any move by Trump and his allies to submit alternate slates this year will prove as unsuccessful as it did in 2020.
“At the end of the day, it was essentially worthless paperwork,” he said. “So if they’re interested in filing worthless paperwork again this year, I guess, more power to them.”
