Thank you!

Oh cool, you can see the actual Certificate of Ascertainment in the National Archives. It only has the governor's seal and signature though. Did the fake electors create a fake certificate, forging the governor's signature? Or did they simply send in their ballots? Apparently it is the 12th Amendment that specifies how electors will meet within their respective states, fill out their ballots, and send them to the President of the Senate (saving the bus fare). And then the Electoral Count Act of 1887 created the ascertainment process, because in 1876 the Senate did receive ballots from multiple contradictory electors from a bunch of states. A copy of the Certificate of Ascertainment is sent to the Senate in addition to the "Certificate of Votes" which bears the counts of the actual votes by the electors. The governor's signature on the Certificate of Ascertainment is what proves which electors are the real ones.

In that case, why are the fake ballots even a problem? The news presents this as some novel brilliant last-ditch scheme to stall the election or cast it in doubt. But the scheme is 144 years old and the loophole was closed for good 133 years ago!

I'm guessing the fake electors didn't forge the Certificate of Ascertainment, but signed an unauthorized Certificate of Vote. The certificate says:

We, the undersigned Electors of the State of Michigan for President and Vice President, elected in the General Election held in the State of Michigan on November 3, 2020, and duly convened at the State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, this 14th day of December, 2020, do hereby certify that the following are lists of all votes given by us for the offices of President and Vice President, respectively, of the United States:

Given this language, the Republican electors signing such a certificate would indeed be committing felony fraud in my opinion because they were NOT "elected in the General Election" (they lost) and they were NOT "duly convened". The "they just gave us some piece of paper to sign" is not a believable excuse, since if they could write they could read.