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Well, to some extent you are true. The state presents its vote, and it can decide what votes to allow and whether it is accurate. The Feds have ways to reject the state’s vote, too. The House and Senate can refuse to seat people sent to them. In presidential elections, the House can reject electoral votes sent to them from a state that sends fraudulent totals. The judiciary can order states on how to conduct their elections for federal elections, and even for state elections. They can, for example, say that term limits don’t apply to federal legislators, or require that all citizens be allowed to vote without restrictions, like a poll tax.

But more importantly, the Congress can, by legislation, set standards for the holding of elections in which federal officials are being elected. Congress could issue a federal ID or require the use of procedures to ensure that only citizens are voting. A state’s failure to comply with those standards could result in all kinds of penalties, monetary and nonmonetary. Even criminal. (It could be tantamount to conspiracy to allow illegal voting to violate the standards required.)

If a state still failed to comply, sending, say, a congressman who was clearly elected with illegal aliens voting (or if a state decided to give illegal aliens the votes, which California has talked about) that sets up the issue of not seating the tainted congressman.

So, there’s no direct way to refuse to recognize a state’s election if they fail to follow federal standards for an election, but there are ways that will result in compliance, if (and this is a big if) the feds actually follow the methods that are available to them. In this day and age, Republicans don’t actually have the stones to do what they need to do in the face of such attacks on the Constitution, but the abilities are there. Maybe after Trump’s 8 years, we will rediscover checks and balances and there will be a breed of Republican that is not of the whipped puppy variety.