someone the other day mentioned Hawaii 1960 and asked how are Former Guy's actions different than that? why did the wrong electors not go to jail back then?
i have an answer to that, but first i have a follow up question. why is it that mister the alGore did not do something similar in 2000?
to elucidate on what happened in Hawaii 1960, the initial count of votes had Nixon up by ninety-one (141) votes. for reference, this is about 1% of the vote difference in GA 2020, and about 25% of the vote difference in FL 2000. also, apparently in more than 30 precincts, the Nixon votes plus Kennedy votes was higher than the total number of votes cast according to the official tabulation. interestingly nobody alleged any fraud, the Democrats simply noted the inconsistency and pushed for a partial recount. eventually, they won in court, but the partial recount was still ongoing by Dec 19, the day the electors were required to meet and cast their ballots. as a result, both slates of electors convened and both certificates were sent in. also on the 19th, the judge ordered a full statewide recount. The statewide recount eventually condluded on Dec 28 showing a Kennedy victory by 115 votes. the judge ordered that the (D) electors be named the correct electors and so it was done. the governor (R) rushed a letter to Congress explaining that a new certification was on the way.
any errors in my summary of the wikipedia article on this event are mine, though of course i have not scoured the primary sources myself so anyone who thinks i am missing some crucial context or information is of course free to let me know anytime.
anyway, to answer the question why did the false electors not go to jail in 1960? the answer seems pretty obvious - nobody involved appears to have had any intent to Defraud the United States about which electors Hawaii's Legislature was Chusing, nor to have Defrauded Hawaii as to the results of the election to determine which electors the state's electorate desired the Legislature to Chuse. everyone involved agreed that the appropriate way to Chuse them was to count the votes as accurately as possible - though some said that it would be better to accept the initial result rather than going through this snafu clusterfuck to actually get there - and once it was done, all parties accepted the outcome including then-Vice-President Nixon who presented both slates to Congress but then immediately requested and received unanimous consent to count the (D) slate and set aside the (R) slate.
so what did Former Guy do so differently that justifies a prosecution? patience, we still have to look at what mister the alGore did in 2000. here, instead of looking stuff up on wikipedia, i can use my own memory, so i will. feel free to check the things i get wrong here, because i'm sure something will be.
in the 2000 election, there was apparently an issue with voting machines in FL, which were using some kind of punching lever mechanism to poke a hole next to the name of the option you were attempting to select. but some number of people and/or some number of machines had trouble making the holes go all the way through in the correct place to make it clear who/what they intended to vote for. i assume there were things on the ballot other than just the presidatial candidate, but the presidential vote obviously got the most national attention. anyways the punched out piece was called a 'chad' and the official vote-counting process apparently differentiated between chads that were 'dimpled' or 'hanging' (i don't recall for sure but assume that the fully-punched ballots were machine-counted).
in the initial count mr Bush won* but mister the alGore sued to have a partial recount in a handful of counties and also made his motto something like "Count All The Votes" but of course he really meant those counties where he thought this would help him and don't forget the *asterisk above, because apparently FL at the time (and maybe still?) allowed late mail-in ballots to be counted up to a certain deadline although this may have only been for active-duty overseas military personnel, so actually not all the votes have even been counted (or discounted) once just yet. anyways mr Bush countersued insisting that any recount be done statewide (or not at all) and i'm not sure he honestly cared which, but i am sure there is more to it that i didn't understand at the time and/or don't remember. what i do remember is that the FL supreme court ruled one way, then the US supreme court overruled them basically saying 'whatever it is you (FL supreme court) are trying to do here, you don't seem to have cited any FL law in doing so, the initial count will stand' but again i am telling this from memory and i am sure it was more complicated than that in reality.
anyway mister the alGore lost in court before the safe harbor deadline and never attempted to get another slate certified, presumably because at this point he had no realistic path to achieve a vote count that actually favored him as the winner. after that, it became an article of faith for some people that these events constitued stealing the election from mister the alGore, and for a while there was a website where someone had logged all the ballots and you could go and decide which chads should be counted or not for yourself and see who would win under different counting rules but i can't find it anymore because it has been Drowned By Content which is more evidence that we live in the worst future.
it also apparently never occurred to mister the alGore or Dark Brandon to try the Other Thing that Former Guy tried to do which was telling the VP to just not count the contested votes, either don't open them or open them and say there was a problem, or otherwise just try to ram it through and claim that with a majority of the ballots actually cast we have a Surprise Upset!!! or maybe this plot did occur to them but it would violate their conscience, or maybe it occurred to them and they had no conscience but believe that attempting it would land them impeached and/or prosecuted. but regardless of what you think of him personally, mister the alGore definitely behaved as if he believed the American People would only back him up if he spoke and behaved as if it mattered what the electorate wanted and that the best way to determine that was to count their votes.
(some of you might point out that this was just step one of the Eastman Memo! surely they would have gone for it if they though that step 2 might go their way! which to me is just another way of admitting that step one of the Eastman Memo was a Bad Faith effort to skip over the whole Electoral College idea and get to step 2 of the Eastman Memo. if anyone actually believed that step 1 was okay on its own terms it would have been done before now)
so now we get to 2020/2021 and Former Guy is losing on election day and one of his earliest reactions is to go all STOP THE COUNT! which imo immediately gives away the game, he is not even on board with the idea that the best way to determine the will of the electorate is to count their votes, unless the votes are first purged in a way that is favorable to him. he will of course say no no it i just want all the bad fraudulent votes to be purged which will of course or actually it is okay if i just win by one vote and i can take care of the rest or maybe if you don't play along i will just have my VP toss those electoral votes out anyway (or else hang him maybe?) so shrug-emoji i guess do whatever you want, as long as i win. it's definitely not an effort to Defraud the United States, is that even a thing? surely it can't be fraud if there's not money or property involved (please forget that i spent the past few years complaining about voter fraud that's clearly something different and anyway it shouldn't count if i was just trying to achieve a fraudulent electoral college vote count you guys hate that thing anyway why would it bother you if i destroyed it) anyway i was just acting on the advice of my attorneys and ignoring the advice of a bunch of other attorneys and that's definitely always going to hold up.
but i guess if you want to summarize each of these events as 'trying to win' and ignore all the details then sure go ham they are just the same! and trying to prosecute one if you don't prosecute the other is just criminalizing politics!
the thing i am maddest about is that mister the alGore was wrong in the worst way, too many of the American People don’t actually care much about determining the will of the electorate by counting our votes.