States must follow their own laws, which specify that voters, not state legislatures, choose electors. There is no lawful way for state legislatures to override the voters after the election. Therefore, if any state legislature attempts to send rogue electors contrary to the vote in their state, they intend to vote to accept the legitimate slate that was chosen by the voters.

They could add that while Trump has the right to contest the results in the courts, he has a responsibility as president to stop short of pressing frivolous cases and of amplifying false rumors and conspiracy theories. Well over two weeks after the election, Trump and his team have produced nothing even close to the kind of evidence that would bring any of the results into question, let alone flip the outcome in three or four states that would be needed to change the final result.

Look: The most likely outcome is still that Trump’s efforts will fizzle out, and that the appointment of electors and the counting of their votes will become the purely ceremonial event that it always has been. But Trump has now gone from legitimately contesting the election to illegitimately attempting to steal it, and in the process he’s undermining confidence in democracy. People are threatening election officials trying to do their jobs, and Trump is putting pressure on Republican elected officials to join his unconstitutional scheming.