Far-right allies of former President Donald Trump are calling on the state legislature in North Carolina and other closely contested presidential battleground states where Republicans hold control to short-circuit the popular vote and directly award the state’s 16 electoral votes to Trump.
Ivan Raiklin, a retired Army lieutenant colonel known for pushing a similar plan four years ago to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to throw the 2020 election, made the pitch during an appearance at the final stop of the ReAwaken America Tour, a roadshow that mixes evangelical Christianity, conspiracy theories and slavish devotion to Trump, on Oct. 18.
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security director and the event’s star attraction, introduced Raiklin as an “amazing guy” and a “friend” who “has a plan,” during the far-right gathering in Selma, a Republican-leaning suburb outside of Raleigh that is part of an area where Democrats made slight gains in the last presidential election.
“The title of my speech: How do we guarantee that North Carolina’s electors for president and vice president are, number one, not stolen by the radical commies, and guaranteed to go to the Republican nominee,” Raiklin said.
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The anti-democratic proposal rests on a novel legal framework known as the independent state legislature theory. The idea that state legislatures hold the authority to override the popular vote and directly appoint electoral votes was a component of the larger effort to overturn the last election. As Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the former president's allies in Congress attempted to prevent the certification of the election and send the electoral slates narrowly won by President Joe Biden back to friendly Republican legislatures for reconsideration.
If Republican-controlled legislatures override the popular vote and directly appoint electors during this election, it will be the first time that has happened in this country since 1876.
Raiklin said in Selma that Trump supporters should spend the next “several weeks” trying to “motivate” House Speaker Tim Moore and Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who serves as president of the Senate, to convene a special session “to allocate its electors.” Considering the supermajority Republicans hold in both chambers of the North Carolina legislature, Raiklin predicted that the electors would be awarded to Trump.
Moore and Robinson could not be reached for comment for this story.
Patrick Gannon, a spokesperson for the N.C. State Board of Elections, said the scheme that Raiklin and others are promoting is illegal.
“What is being advocated is a violation of the law,” Gannon said in an email to Raw Story. “North Carolina law requires the boards of elections to certify the vote tallies in an election. North Carolina law and the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 require the boards of elections to count and report the votes of its voters. The certified results of the presidential election get reported by the State Board of Elections to the secretary of state and governor, and the state’s presidential electors are assigned by the governor according to the certified results of the election."
Michael Luttig, a former U.S. circuit court judge appointed to the bench by President George H.W. Bush, has warned that the independent legislature theory is “the Republican blueprint to the 2024 election.”
“Unlike the Democrats’ theft claimed by Republicans, the Republicans’ theft would be in open defiance of the popular vote and thus the will of the American people,” Luttig wrote for CNN. “Poetic, though tragic, irony for America’s democracy.”
Coupled with Raiklin’s call to upend almost 150 years of custom in election administration is a history of provocative rhetoric.
Raiklin’s speech in the past has tiptoed up to the line of advocating political violence by calling for “livestreamed swatting raids” against Trump’s political enemies, and calling for Trump supporters to respond in kind to the death of Ashli Babbitt at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and to the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pa. on July 13.
To be clear, there is absolutely no evidence that either the Biden administration or the campaign of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris was involved in the assassination attempt against Trump in any way whatsoever.
Raiklin has continuously maintained his statements are justified, and on Monday he wrote on X: “Everyone knows that my rhetoric and intent is always tethered to legal, moral and ethical activities.”
The Helene effect
Raiklin and a North Carolina political consultant named Noel Fritsch have cited the disruption caused by Hurricane Helene as a rationale for disenfranchising voters.
“What just happened a couple weeks ago in North Carolina?” Raiklin asked during his speech at the ReAwaken America Tour stop in Selma. “Hurricane Helene, right? So, how do we guarantee that we have a free, fair, safe and secure, fully transparent election come yesterday through November 5th?”
Raiklin’s call to set aside the popular vote in North Carolina provides an indicator of how close the contest in what is considered a must-win state in any electoral path to victory for the Republican nominee. And at least so far, devastation wrought by Helene does appear to have made an impact.
Residents of the 13 counties most affected by Helene cast 74,837 votes during the first four days of early voting, down 44 percent from the total for the same time period during early voting in the 2020 election. In contrast, residents in the remaining 87 counties cast a total of 956,375 votes in the first four days of early voting, down from 1.4 million over the same period in 2020. (The state set a record for turnout on Oct. 17, the first day of early voting, topping the previous high-water mark in 2020, but since then participation has dropped below the performance for the same time period four years ago.)
Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western North Carolina University, told Raw Story that “even small shifts in turnout” can make the difference between which candidate carries the state. The 13 counties identified by the State Board of Elections as having the most significant disruption to infrastructure, accessibility to voting sites and postal service lean towards Trump by about 10 points, Cooper said, even when the liberal outposts of Asheville and Boone are included.
“After four days of early voting, it appears that turnout in the affected counties is lagging a bit,” Cooper wrote in an email to Raw Story. “We will see whether turnout picks up as we get close to the election, but at this very early stage, it is certainly possible that the election may, at least partially, hinge on whether voters in western North Carolina return to normal levels of engagement before Election Day.”
Fritsch, a political consultant who publishes the far-right conspiracy news site National File, has also cited the devastation caused by Helene as a reason the popular vote should be disregarded in North Carolina. Fritsch outlined his reasoning during an Oct. 13 appearance on a talk-radio show hosted by Mark McCloskey, a former personal injury lawyer in St. Louis who came to national attention when he and his wife brandished firearms at Black Lives Matter protesters in the summer of 2020.
Noting that North Carolina began sending out absentee ballots on Sept. 20, Fritsch told McCloskey: “I don’t even think it’s possible to have a fair election in the state of North Carolina given that so many of the ballots have already been mailed out. How many of them had been filled out and mailed back in? Are they secure? Are the ones that are mailed out secure? Well, the world may never know, Mark.”
Karen Brinson Bell, the state election director, has signaled that election officials across North Carolina are prepared to handle any challenges presented by the storm recovery.
Brinson Bell told reporters during a press call on Oct. 15 that her staff is “very confident in what we are going to be able to provide to the voters of western North Carolina.” She added that the resolution approved by the State Board of Elections and an emergency law passed by the state legislature are “very sound in giving the flexibility to the counties to administer this election in a way that can serve the voters and be accessible to the voters and give them the flexibility that they need to have adequate workers and adequate sites, and make adjustments to those sites in an emergency situation.”
Brinson Bell also offered assurances that absentee ballots sent out before the storm will remain secure.
“Some of the measures we’ve taken with absentee ballots we will still have strong and accurate and documented chain of custody throughout the state to ensure that those ballots that might have been [cast] by voters in affected counties that arrived elsewhere are returned safely and securely to the home county or the issuing county,” she said.
Counter-signaling from Trump
The battered turnout numbers in western North Carolina do not appear to have registered with Trump, who made a campaign stop in Asheville on Monday. And Trump and his campaign lieutenants are striking a completely different tone than peripheral allies such as Raiklin and Fritsch. In contrast to the declarations by the two men that the election may be irredeemably damaged by the storm impact, Trump on Monday expressed confidence that his supporters are getting to the polls.
Emails to the Trump campaign for thie story seeking comment on Raiklin and Fritsch's call to bypass the popular vote went unreturned.
Asked by a reporter on Monday if he had any reason to believe the election results in North Carolina would not be credible, Trump waved off concern.
“No, I think it’s the opposite,” he said. “I was so impressed. I think they have a pretty good [election] system here…. I have not heard any complaints about that. I think that the amazing thing is that they’ve come from… it was like they have no home. They stayed in the woods. I heard cases where they’re staying in the woods because they wanted to vote. And they voted.
“Not to get too political, but they tend to be very Trump areas,” the former president added. “And that the people would come out like that — I think it’s a great sign.”
As he did before the 2020 election, Trump has incessantly made false claims that Democrats are attempting to steal the 2024 election. But he said Monday that he has not seen any evidence of cheating so far.
Standing at his side, Michael Whatley, Trump’s hand-picked co-chair of the Republican National Committee, echoed his boss’ sentiment.
“Yeah, we’re very early in the process,” Whatley said. “And we’re tracking across all 50 states right now to make sure that the systems we want to have in place are in place. And we’re very happy with the initial results.”
But Trump suggested his support for Whatley could be retracted if he winds up losing the election in North Carolina.
“And now I can blame him if something happens,” Trump said. “And I’ll say, ‘Well, I made a mistake.’ I’ll send him back. But I don’t think that’s going to happen, based on what we’re hearing from early returns. Which are really phenomenal.”
Similar calls in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona
If what happened during the 2020 election is any guide, Trump is likely to turn to outside advisors if he comes up short during the vote count in critical swing states. In December 2020, the former president met with Flynn, attorney Sidney Powell and conspiracy theorist Patrick Byrne at the White House, where he entertained their proposal to use the National Guard to seize election machinery and re-run the election. That makes the maneuver to pressure Republican lawmakers to directly appoint electors a potentially appealing move, no matter the constitutional chaos that would ensue.
Raiklin and Fritsch have been seeding the idea of Republican legislatures directly awarding electoral votes to Trump, not just in North Carolina but in other states.
Raiklin spoke at the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival, hosted by a religious group led by Sean Moon that worships the AR-15, in Greeley, Pa. on Oct. 12.
Raiklin urged his audience to go to the state capitol in Harrisburg after the election and “confront” state lawmakers with supposed “evidence of the illegitimate steal” while demanding that “those electors are not transmitted to Congress” and using their “powers to allocate those electors by voting in a joint session.”
Fritsch made the same proposal on McCloskey's radio show.
“This is how election went for like a hundred years,” Fritsch told McCloskey. “The state capitol would just directly apportion the electors. We can go back to that. We just have to demand that our state legislatures — that are red, by the way, in North Carolina, in Georgia, in Arizona — do that.”
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