This still amazes me. They are legally able to ignore the state voting results in Federal elections.
Aah, you have to go back to what I said above - the USA is not one country it is a union of states.
The President is not directly elected, they are elected by the Electoral College which is made up of representatives from each state. Ok, so how are the state reps on the Electoral College chosen? Well, that's up to each state. They all have some sort of election for their Electoral College reps, but the state legislature can choose to select them a different way, maybe the governor selects them, or the state legislature, the main thing to remember is that elections for the state reps on the Electoral College is not compulsory, states can choose to do this in a different way. Whether this means a state can ignore the vote when that is how the state decided that the Electoral College reps will be chosen is a bit of a question, I suppose they could in theory, but I suspect this will have to be tested in court if it happens.
One thing you may notice is that just about every state has a winner takes all result for reps to the Electoral College, but there are a couple of small states where the reps are proportional to the vote in that state, so you have a mix of Electoral College members, from the same state, supporting each candidate. What this shows is how little is set in stone, even the type of result can be different depending on how the state decides it will be done.
In short, it's insane!
Mid terms still looking close, Senate looks like it might be 50/50 again and maybe the Republicans get a small House majority. This will take weeks to sort and in Georgia there's likely to be a run off election for the Senate (they, unlike most states, don't have a first past the post system for Senators, they have what is generally referred to as a second ballot system, unless 1 candidate can get 50% + 1 of the vote then the 2 candidates with the highest number of votes have another election on Dec 6).
DS