Unlike 2020, Republicans intend to prevent Harris from receiving 270 electoral college votes by trying to gum up the certification processes at the state and local levels (boldface mine):

Trump has taken to praising Republican election officials in various precincts because he believes they will refuse to certify their local results unless he wins their state outright—not because they’ll have any good-faith doubts about the vote tallies in their counties, but in order to prevent or delay their state governments from certifying Harris as the winner of their electoral votes.

The aim, as I understand it, is threefold:

• First, create what they will characterize as an inversion of January 6, by giving Harris-Walz voters little choice but to march and protest wherever MAGA officials hold the presidential election hostage.
• Second, play for time in enough states through January 6, such that neither candidate has 270 certified electoral votes on the day the Constitution requires Congress to ascertain the victor.
• Third, use GOP dominance in small, rural states to hand the election to Trump in a contingent election even if Republicans lose the House in November.

This is not a terribly clever plan, and they’re doing an even worse job of hiding it. But it’s still an insurrectionary conspiracy that Democrats can’t oppose by fighting the last war.

So, what to do? Well:

The starting point would probably be high-profile Senate hearings with local elections officials willing to sound the alarm about their MAGA colleagues’s dark intentions. Then advancing legislation to impose federal criminal penalties on elections officials who take results hostage. Make Senate Republicans filibuster it; challenge House Republicans to hold a vote.

But more radical action may be necessary. If Democrats win the House, they should be prepared to exploit ambiguities in precedent and refuse to seat Republicans from states or counties where MAGA election officials have blocked statewide certification of the presidential election result. After all, if the top-of-the-ticket is suspect, why should the rest of the ballot get a rubber stamp? If that’s not enough to assure that a contingent election will deliver the presidency to the true winner, President Biden should contemplate convening then adjourning the House and Senate, pursuant to his Article II, Section 3 powers, until MAGA relents.

The second option, denying seats in the House, is the most important. It’s not that those seats won’t be filled by Republicans, but they don’t have to be filled with Republicans who cheat to win an election. The concern I have is that I’m not seeing much in the way of planning for something like this, though telling your opponent your strategy well ahead of time probably isn’t a good idea.

I really hope someone is gaming this out, and not banking on the courts to save our democracy.