Mid-November through December 19, 2016
After the presidential election, the governor of your state prepares seven Certificates of Ascertainment. “As soon as practicable,” after the election results in your state are certified, the governor sends one of the Certificates of Ascertainment to the Archivist.
Certificates of Ascertainment should be sent to the Archivist no later than the meeting of the electors in December. However, federal law sets no penalty for missing the deadline.
The remaining six Certificates of Ascertainment are held for use at the meeting of the Electors in December.
December 13, 2016
States must make final decisions in any controversies over the appointment of their electors at least six days before the meeting of the Electors. This is so their electoral votes will be presumed valid when presented to Congress.
Decisions by states’ courts are conclusive, if decided under laws enacted before Election Day.
December 19, 2016
The Electors meet in their state and vote for President and Vice President on separate ballots. The electors record their votes on six “Certificates of Vote,” which are paired with the six remaining Certificates of Ascertainment.
The electors sign, seal, and certify six sets of electoral votes. A set of electoral votes consists of one Certificate of Ascertainment and one Certificate of Vote. These are distributed immediately as follows:
December 28, 2016
Electoral votes (the Certificates of Vote) must be received by the President of the Senate and the Archivist no later than nine days after the meeting of the electors. States face no legal penalty for failure to comply.
Probably unconstitutional, because the Constitution says that the state LEGISLATURES, not the state courts and not the state governors, shall determine how the electors are to be designated, to wit:
Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress
Source: U. S. Constitution, Article Two, Section One, Paragraph Two.
In other words, whatever a state court might say, that state's legislature would have the right and the power to nullify that court's ruling, up to and until the actual meeting day of the electors. Moreover, the U. S. Constitution gives a state's governor no power to veto such legislative action.
(Equally, a state's legislature would theoretically have the power to nullify and overturn the selection of electors made by the state's popular vote -- although it seems the remotest of possibilities that such action would ever be taken.)
This description illustrates, almost perfectly, why and for what reasons, the 2000 election had to end up and end up QUICKLY in the US Supreme Court. As a resident of Florida, I watched our Florida Supreme Court, all 7 being Democrats, keep extending the process as the Gore Campaign tried DESPERATELY to find a way to win. They did not want a recount, they wanted to cherry pick and select individual precincts (at one argument) to count, strangely these were always Democrat-strong areas.
At the time of the final US Supreme Court decision on 12 December, the Florida Supreme Court had under consideration a motion for EVERY Ballot to be physically sent to Tallahassee. This was after earlier affirmed orders that was to bring disputed ballots, sample voting booths, and voting machines from Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties to a lower court in Tallahassee by Friday, 1 December 2000. Imagine what an entire recount and the time it would require if that motion had passed!
FYI and to their credit, 3 of the 7 Florida Supreme Court Justices were quite resistant to being railroaded and pressured by their fellow Democrats.