“The Hawaii fiasco in 1960 was very different than 2020 in one important respect: Both sets of electors — Kennedy’s and Nixon’s — were submitted for the joint session of Congress in early January 1961. This would have been a textbook case of “disputed” electors to be considered by Congress under the Electoral Count Act of 1877. This is why I said back in November and December of 2020 that the legislatures of the disputed states should have voted for a separate slate of electors to send to Congress.
Ironically, Richard Nixon was not only one of the two candidates in the 1960 election ... he was also the sitting VP presiding over the joint session of Congress in January 1961. By the time that joint session was held, the final recount in Hawaii had established Kennedy as the winner. Nixon could have legitimately accepted both sets of disputed electors and had Congress vote on them, but he decided it wasn’t even worth pursuing. “
The states have the final say, and Hawaii was changed later. The same could have happened in 2020.
Hawaii’s electoral votes were never changed. They submitted slates of electors for BOTH candidates. It was the final result of the state’s popular vote that changed from one candidate to another after the electoral vote deadline, not the certified electoral vote.
Something worth noting here is that Congress could have legitimately voted to accept the Nixon electors from Hawaii even though the final popular vote totals published in late December 1960 showed Kennedy as the winner. That’s the risk a state runs when it can’t get its act together in the electoral vote process. There’s no guarantee that Congress will get it “right.”