section_path: Twenty-first century/Election subversion
section_name: Election subversion
paragraph_text: Election subversion
  
  By 2020, most state legislatures were controlled by the Republican Party, though some of those states had Democratic governors. As part of attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, many Republican legislators in seven battleground states won by Joe Biden created fraudulent certificates of ascertainment composed of "alternate electors" to declare Donald Trump had actually won their states, thereby overruling the will of voters. They hoped to pass these fraudulent certificates to vice president Mike Pence on January 6, 2021, so he would reverse Biden's election and certify Trump as the winner, a scheme which became known as the Pence Card. Pence instead counted the authentic slates of electors and properly declared Biden the victor. By June 2022, participants in the alternate electors scheme began receiving subpoenas from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack and the United States Department of Justice. Investigations into a Trump fake electors plot ensued.