Politico: “The objections Republican lawmakers plan to raise on Wednesday won’t stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. But the entire episode may make a powerful argument for abandoning the institution that makes Republicans competitive in presidential elections in the first place – the Electoral College. Likely to drag on for hours and draw wall-to-wall coverage, the objection by a group of Republican senators and House members to the Electoral College’s certification of the vote will cap an extraordinary, two-month-long effort by President Donald Trump and his allies to subvert the election’s outcome. But whereas those Republicans’ complaints previously focused public attention on baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud, traditionalist Republicans fear that the endgame in Congress – unlike in the courts – will be to undermine the GOP-friendly institution of the Electoral College itself.”

“‘I think this is something that will come back to haunt Republicans,’ said Jon Gilmore, a Republican strategist in Arkansas and an adviser to the state’s governor, Asa Hutchinson. ‘It opens a Pandora’s box.’ Since the 1990s, Republican presidential candidates have won the popular vote only once – in George W. Bush’s reelection campaign in 2004 – with Trump relying on the Electoral College for his victory in 2016 and having no chance of running even close to Biden without it this year. In the near future, the nation’s changing demographics, despite Trump’s modest inroads with people of color this year, appear likely to further put the popular vote out of Republicans’ reach, making the Electoral College all the more important to the GOP. Given the stakes, inadvertently delegitimizing the Electoral College would seem counterintuitive. To some Republicans, it’s nuts.”