LANSING, Mich. — A Michigan judge on Tuesday dismissed charges against 15 Republicans who had been accused of serving as "alternate" or "fake" electors for former President Donald Trump in the wake of the 2020 election, a ruling that highlights the mounting legal difficulties faced by prosecutors pursuing members of the slates that sought to overturn President Joe Biden's victory.
Judge Kristen Simmons concluded prosecutors had not proven the defendants intended to defraud the public, saying many of the participants sincerely believed there were election irregularities. The decision follows a string of setbacks in related cases in other states and comes as federal efforts to pursue similar allegations have been complicated by a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling limiting the scope of presidential immunity.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat who brought the indictments, said the ruling was part of a broader pattern of erosion in election-related prosecutions. "It’s getting harder and harder to get election cases across the finish line," Nessel told reporters, adding that intimidation and threats against judges have made litigating such matters more fraught. One defendant in Michigan had previously reached a cooperation agreement with prosecutors and had charges dropped.
The charged individuals had signed documents in several battleground states declaring themselves to be the rightful electors for Trump and submitted those papers to Congress in an effort to have the alternate slates counted on Jan. 6, 2021. Those slates were part of an effort by Trump and allies to persuade Congress to reject the certified electors for Biden and to name Trump the winner.
The Michigan dismissal is the latest development in a patchwork of state-level outcomes. In Arizona, a judge returned charges to a grand jury for further instruction about what federal law requires. Nevada's judge dismissed charges there on the ground they were filed in the wrong city; Nevada's Democratic attorney general, Aaron Ford, has since refiled the indictments. In Georgia, allegations tied to alternate electors are among charges brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in a sprawling case against Trump and others that is on hold while she appeals her removal for alleged ethics violations. Wisconsin's case, brought by Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul, has continued to move forward more steadily; a judge last month denied a motion to dismiss in that matter.
Defendants and their allies hailed the Michigan ruling as vindication. Meshawn Maddock, a former Michigan Republican Party chair and one of the highest-profile defendants, said in a written statement that volunteer service as an alternate elector was not a crime. Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who advised Trump, posted on the social medium X that the decision was "great news" and urged dismissals in other states.
Legal scholars and prosecutors say the cases present novel questions of statutory interpretation, intent and procedure that criminal courts have not routinely confronted. Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University, said the cases operate at a high, abstract level and the criminal justice system was not well suited to adjudicate them. "These very 40,000-foot level cases that are brought to 'protect democracy,' the criminal justice system isn't equipped to handle that," he said.
Rick Hasen, an elections law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, described the fake elector prosecutions as among the "weaker" criminal matters arising from the aftermath of 2020, in part because many defendants portrayed their actions as a form of procedural insurance: a backup slate to be used if courts reversed results before Congress' Jan. 6 deadline. Hasen added that the combination of failures in prosecutions, the constraints placed on federal cases by the Supreme Court's immunity ruling, and the pardon of some participants in Jan. 6-related prosecutions could create troubling incentives for future challenges to election outcomes.
Prosecutors have pointed to the timing and coordination of the alternate-elector certificates and associated communications as evidence of a coordinated scheme to subvert the lawful process of certifying presidential electors. Defense attorneys and many defendants have countered that their clients believed they were acting lawfully and that the documents were legitimate alternate slates contingent upon later legal determinations.
The legal landscape has shifted since Congress tightened rules in 2022 to reduce ambiguity about competing elector slates, specifying that states could present only one slate of electors and clarifying the governor's role in signing certificates. Still, the post-2020 litigation has produced a patchwork of state-level outcomes rather than a uniform resolution. In Arizona and Nevada, prosecutors have appealed or refiled after dismissals or procedural setbacks; in Wisconsin, courts have sustained the indictments at least long enough for the matter to proceed to pretrial stages.
The Michigan decision will likely prompt renewed arguments by defense teams elsewhere. Prosecutors, meanwhile, face strategic choices about whether to refile, seek different charges, or pursue alternate avenues of accountability. Nessel and other Democratic attorneys general who brought these cases have emphasized that their indictments aimed to hold accountable those who participated in a coordinated effort to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.
As the cases continue to wend through state courts, legal experts warn that precedent is limited and outcomes may hinge on granular proof of criminal intent and the factual record around coordination and communications. For now, the Michigan ruling serves as a prominent example of the legal and evidentiary hurdles prosecutors must overcome when pursuing participants in the alternate-elector schemes tied to the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.