I mean, a state that is forseeing a election which an opponent party will likely win, could just pass a law before the election that says “The state legislature shall have the sole authority of appointing electors to the electoral college for elections of president and vice president” and if they have an already gerrymandered state legislature, they could cling to power with like 40%, or maybe even less, of the votes and have a trifecta in the state, electoral votes are practically permanently voting for the party. They could even change how governors are selected by making them to also be appointed by legislature, further solidifying their power.
Why haven’t some states just gone full authoritarian? I mean, the federal government couldn’t do anything about such states if this were to happen, due to federalism.
There is no federal law prohibiting states from allocating electoral votes with no regard for the popular vote. But these electoral votes are allocated by state governments, which tend to be democratic in nature. States could make laws allocating electoral votes in an authoritarian manner, but politicians who support such legislation would likely lose the support of their largely pro-democracy constituents, and lose their position of power.
In order to effectively subvert democracy, you need to keep the wool over the population’s eyes until it’s too late for them to do anything. It’s kind of hard to do that with something like this.