LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — The 2024 election is finally over, at least here in Nevada.
On Tuesday, the six Republican electors pledged to President-elect Donald Trump and met on the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno to sign documents that certify the Republican candidate won the most votes in Nevada's Nov. 5 election, and thus is entitled to the state's six Electoral College votes.
The same scene took place around the country on Tuesday, and the certificates signed by the 538 electors will be sent to Washington, D.C. to be opened and counted before a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6. Ironically, presiding over the chamber that day will be Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the election to Trump and quickly conceded.
Although many people don't realize it, when they vote for a presidential candidate, they are actually voting for a slate of electors chosen by that candidate's political party in a given state. Trump's electors — Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald, Clark County GOP Chairman Jesse Law, Bruce Parks, Kathryn Njus, Robert Tyree and Brian Hardy — were nominated by the state Republican Party.
Electors take an oath similar to the one sworn by state officeholders and are bound to vote only for the candidate who received the most votes in the state. The final election results show Trump won 751,205 votes to Harris's 705,197.
There was no small irony on Tuesday, inasmuch as two of the electors — McDonald and Law — four years ago signed fake Electoral College certificates claiming Trump had won the 2020 election, when in fact Joe Biden earned the most votes in Nevada and nationwide.
WATCH: Four years later, 'fake electors' become real ones
The certificates were part of an alleged scheme to allow Trump to remain in office by trying to induce then-Vice President Mike Pence to count the fake electors for Trump, or at least to delay the certification of the vote.
It was the counting of the Electoral College votes in 2020 that was disrupted by the deadly riots that saw Trump supporters attack police officers and break into the United States Capitol, sending lawmakers fleeing. Hundreds of people who participated in that event have been successfully prosecuted and jailed, although Trump has repeatedly promised to pardon them once he is sworn into office for another term on Jan. 20.
McDonald, Law and four others were indicted by a Clark County grand jury on charges of filing a false instrument and uttering a forged document, but a judge in June dismissed the charges, saying they should have been filed in Carson City or Douglas County, where the crimes allegedly occurred. Attorney General Aaron Ford is appealing that dismissal to the Nevada Supreme Court.
WATCH: Fake elector case from 2020 presidential election dismissed in Clark County
In the meantime, Ford has filed uttering a forged document charges against the six electors in Carson City, just before the statute of limitations expired. That move keeps the case alive, regardless of the outcome of the Supreme Court appeal.
But those charges didn't prevent McDonald and Law from serving as real electors in Tuesday's Electoral College ceremony, overseen by Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar and his chief deputy for elections, Mark Wlaschin.
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