I have written this piece for the LA Times. It begins:

In Fulton County, Ga., Donald Trump and others are widely expected to be indicted any day for attempting to illegally reverse Joe Biden’s victory in that state in 2020. Trump’s alleged interference includes his infamous call with Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, in which Trump cajoled him to “find” 11,780 votes so he could overtake Biden’s lead.

In Michigan, three allies of Trump, including last year’s Republican nominee for state attorney general, were indicted in state court for engaging in a plot to illegally seize voting machines and examine them in a failed attempt to prove a Trump victory in the state.

And in Michigan and elsewhere, “fake electors” who purported to cast electoral college votes for Trump in states that Biden won are facing or may face an array of state charges of forgery, fraud and other crimes.

You might be tempted to see these criminal proceedings in state courts as a superfluous sideshow to Trump’s federal indictment on charges related to overthrowing the 2020 election. In fact, these parallel cases are essential to protecting American democracy in three ways.

First, state charges could stick against Trump in a way that federal charges might not….

Second, Trump is not the only person who allegedly engaged in election subversion in 2020 and 2021, and the states are likely to be the most promising path for holding the others accountable too….

Finally, the state prosecutions remind us that American elections are decentralized and that the safeguarding of our democracy cannot just be the responsibility of the federal government….