In 2000 Bush was ahead in the count in FL and the FL Supremes wanted to keep recounting to try and steal enough votes to flip it. The SCOTUS said "fine, but you have to apply the same standards everywhere", which meant starting over the day before the EC had to vote, so the FL Supremes backed off. The default was "Bush wins", and Gore was fighting against the default.

In 2020 the default is "Biden wins", kinda, if the stolen votes are not thrown out, and like in 2000 there will not be enough time to start over. But also the situation in some of these States is kinda hopeless if they have to throw out votes because questionable ones weren't segregated, envelopes and ballots were destroyed, you know the deal. So there may be a different default: the default may be "no result" if the SCOTUS throws a big enough monkey wrench in the works, and that's the same as "the legislatures decide".

This is important. In 2000 and in 2020 and always the SCOTUS wants as much as possible to not appear political, and not decide political issues. In 2000 they split 7-2 on the question of standards, and 5-4 on whether to somehow wave the December 14 deadline and order the FL Supremes to keep (re)counting. In 2020 they don't want to make it so the default is "Trump wins", and they don't want to bless "Biden wins" either because that means accepting unconstitutional and illegal actions. The Court needs a third way. That third way is to make it so the votes can't be certified at all. That immediately causes a crisis where the legislatures must act.

There's the risk that some legislatures might miss the deadline or somehow split on electors and fail to elect some. If that happens we could end up with neither candidate reaching 270. That then sets up a contingent election being called on January 6 for some time before January 20. And this time we'll have SCOTUS rulings that prevent some of the theft techniques, and there may be no time to do mail-in voting.

So it's entirely possible that the election isn't resolved until January 19 or something like that. Even, perhaps, a bit after the 20th.

That's one set of possibilities.

I'm ignoring the ones that are catastrophic to our side because we all know what that looks like (SCOTUS takes a vacation from enforcing the Constitution). Why dwell on losing? No.

Other possibilities where we win involve the President invoking the Insurrection Act. This will could only happen after the final SCOTUS rulings, and probably only if Trump has enough evidence of Biden/Harris treason to warrant it. In that case all bets are off and who knows how it all ends.

My take is the SCOTUS rules that what PA/MI/WI/GA did is unconstitutional, leaving an undecidable mess in place that requires the legislatures to step in, and then the legislatures put Trump on top.