270 Isn't An Absolute Thing

 Is the 270 Electoral Vote number really the magic number, and is the 538 total Electoral College number a magic number?

Well....no.

Lets say you run an election, and two states (just random select Michigan (16 EC votes) and NY state (29 EC votes) screw up and can't confirm or certify their votes by 14 December.

Together, that amounts to 45 votes which officially don't exist.  If they don't exist, the total magic number is no longer 538....it's 493, and the winning number is now....246.5 (really 247).....instead of 270.

At this point, you might ask the silly question....just how many states might screw this entirely up?  Well....there's no way to forecast this.  It might be zero....one, or perhaps even a dozen states.  

Having three Trump-win states from 2016 fail?  Under this scenario, it brings it awful close to a Biden-win scenario.  

Having the Supreme Court get into the middle of this and order states or their Governors to comply or sign-off?  In the case of Michigan, I think their Governor would just say 'no' and refuse to comply.  Could the Supreme Court get into the middle of this to correct it?  More than likely....but you start to drag up questions over how this ever got so screwed up, and who ordered what to occur.

In some ways, you'd be inviting all of 2021 to be a huge discussion over election failure, and assign blame to individuals.

A method that the court might just say....Electoral College results be totally thrown out because of the reckless behavior, and just run the back-up method.  Well....that would go and trigger a massive anger by pro-Biden folks as being unfair.  

Could the court go and suggest the 14 December Electoral College end-point be thrown out and conducted on 3 January instead (just a random day)?  They probably could say they have this power.....although most would question it.

Wondering how this would play out after the election?  Speaker Pelosi, by 14 December, would be calling for a massive hearing, and attempting this before early January.  After early January, if the Republicans win in bulk, their new House Speaker would restart the entire process, and go into an entirely different direction. 

The FBI in the middle of this?  With no doubt.  

All of this leading to a massive f**ked-up situation where millions of Americans feel the system is built in a manner worse than what they have in Bolivia?  Probably so.  Some would even admit that things ran better in 1912's election than it did in 2020.