Grosse Pointe Farms woman faces election law violations for alleged role in 2020 presidential election

GROSSE POINTE FARMS — A Grosse Pointe Farms woman is among the 16 Michiganders facing multiple felony charges for their alleged roles in the alleged false electors scheme that followed the 2020 presidential election.

Mayra Rodriguez, 64, of Grosse Pointe Farms, was among those charged by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel July 18. According to Nessel’s office, each of the defendants has been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit forgery, which carries a possible prison sentence of 14 years; two counts of forgery, a 14-year felony; one count of conspiracy to commit uttering and publishing, a 14-year felony; one count of uttering and publishing, a 14-year felony; one count of conspiracy to commit election law forgery, a five-year felony; and two counts of election law forgery, a five-year felony.

“The false electors’ actions undermined the public’s faith in the integrity of our elections and, we believe, also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan,” Nessel said in a press release. “My department has prosecuted numerous cases of election law violations throughout my tenure, and it would be malfeasance of the greatest magnitude if my department failed to act here in the face of overwhelming evidence of an organized effort to circumvent the lawfully cast ballots of millions of Michigan voters in a presidential election.” 

According to the report issued by the Jan. 6 congressional committee, former President Donald Trump and his supporters prepared their own slates of Electoral College electors in several states where Trump lost, including Michigan. The report’s findings read, in part, that on Dec. 14, 2020, “the date when true, certified electors were meeting to cast their electoral votes for the candidate who had won the popular vote in each of those States — these fake electors also met, ostensibly casting electoral votes for President Trump, the candidate who had lost. … President Trump and his advisors wanted Vice President (Mike) Pence (who also serves as president of the U.S. Senate) to disregard real electoral college votes for former Vice President (Joe) Biden, in favor of these fake competing electoral slates.”

Nessel’s office accused the Michigan defendants of meeting in the basement of the Michigan Republican Party headquarters on Dec. 14, 2020, and signing their names to certificates saying they were “duly elected and qualified electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America for the State of Michigan.” The certificates were then sent to the U.S. Senate and National Archives in an apparent effort to deliver the state’s electoral votes to Trump, not Biden.

“The evidence will demonstrate there was no legal authority for the false electors to purport to act as ‘duly elected presidential electors’ and execute the false electoral documents,” Nessel said in the press release. “Every serious challenge to the election had been denied, dismissed, or otherwise rejected by the time the false electors convened. There was no legitimate legal avenue or plausible use of such a document or an alternative slate of electors. There was only the desperate effort of these defendants, who we have charged with deliberately attempting to interfere with and overturn our free and fair election process, and along with it, the will of millions of Michigan voters. That the effort failed and democracy prevailed does not erase the crimes of those who enacted the false electors plot.” 

At press time, only the alleged false electors in Michigan had been charged; those accused of the same activity in other battleground states had not been charged for their alleged actions.

In the wake of the charges, Vance Patrick, the chair of the Oakland County Republican Party, released a statement that read: “This is an egregious abuse of power by a radical progressive and continues the trend of politically motivated witch hunts, perpetrated by the left against Republican candidates and activists.”

Nessel is a Democrat.

Rodriguez, an attorney, has been active in the community. She’s a former president of the Junior League of Detroit and former at-large board member of the Eastside Republican Club.

In 2020, Rodriguez was the 14th Congressional District chair in Michigan and a Republican National Convention delegate.

Rodriguez did not return repeated calls for comment before press time.