A Nevada judge threw out criminal charges against six Republican electors who challenged the 2020 election results — and the dismissal is the latest crack in a multi-state campaign to turn election dissent into felony.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford — a Democrat running for governor — brought forgery and "offering a false instrument for filing or record" charges against the six, including Nevada GOP chair Michael McDonald and former Clark County GOP chair Jesse Law. They pleaded not guilty. Ford's office says it will appeal.
The case centered on the electors' decision to gather outside the Nevada Legislature after the 2020 election and sign a certificate awarding Nevada's six electoral votes to Donald Trump, who lost the state by more than 30,000 votes. The ceremony was broadcast online — not exactly a clandestine operation.
The defendants called it "political theater" meant to publicize their concerns about the election and preserve their right to challenge the official results. Their attorneys argued they never intended to deceive any government agency into accepting the GOP certificate as real. Prosecutors claimed the electors wanted their documents mistaken for actual electoral votes that then-Vice President Mike Pence would count on January 6, 2021.
Both outlets covering the story leaned into the prosecution's framing. The Associated Press headlined its piece "Nevada's fake elector case"; the Mechanicsburg Patriot News led with "forging." Neither outlet examined why a Democratic attorney general with gubernatorial ambitions might benefit politically from prosecuting Republicans in a swing state.
The broader pattern is harder to spin. Courts have dismissed similar cases in Michigan and Georgia, according to the Patriot News. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes recently dismissed her case — a legal maneuver to bypass a grand jury deadline after losing an appeal — but vows to try again with a new grand jury. A federal case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election was dropped in late 2024. A Wisconsin case is still pending.
Jurisdiction was a problem from the start in Nevada. The case eventually landed in Clark County — home to Las Vegas, and a Democratic stronghold. The question of where to shop a case against Republicans in a state they lost is itself a tell.
The Founders designed a constitutional system where contested elections would be argued, litigated, and resolved through defined channels — not criminalized retroactively against the losing side. The Nevada electors say they were exercising that constitutional right. A judge agreed. The AG wants another bite.
The open question: whether Ford's appeal produces anything the original case could not — or whether the prosecution was always about the process itself, and the message it sent to anyone who dared question the 2020 result.
