President Trump’s persistent efforts to steal an election he lost convincingly is shocking, even by his standards. The cowardice shown by most Republicans in Congress in not condemning his actions, in placing their political survival above their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution, is disturbing. And the reality of how close the country came to a constitutional crisis the likes of which it has not seen since the lead up to the Civil War is chilling.

All 50 states have certified their presidential results. The electoral college process moves forward Monday when the electors cast their ballots, which according to state results will give Democratic candidate Joe Biden a 306-232 electoral-college victory, 36 more votes than the 270 necessary to take office. The results become official when counted in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.

In what should be a last-gasp effort to derail an outcome that now, thankfully, appears inevitable, Trump seeks to join an inane lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. It asks the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency order to invalidate the electoral college votes — and by extension the ballots cast by millions of citizens — of Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

We trust that the high court will summarily dismiss this lawsuit as it did an earlier filing challenging the Pennsylvania results.

State and federal courts have certainly played a vital role in blocking Trump’s attempt to steal the election. In case after case and state after state judges have tossed the Trump legal team's claims of election fraud. Before ever considering invalidating elections, judges demand evidence of widespread fraudulent activity. Trump’s lawyers have not produced any.

Yet nothing seems to stop Trump’s derangement syndrome when it comes to refusing to accept defeat — not a 7-million popular vote loss, not his electoral college loss, and not dozens of court repudiations.

“Most corrupt Election in history, by far. We won!!!” Trump tweeted Thursday.

This sounds like the ravings of a madman, but history has shown us that madmen can pull down democracies if they have willing accomplices. And while the courts deserve due credit for upholding the integrity of elections, it is the lack of accomplices that played the biggest role in preventing Trump from dragging the nation into bedlam.

In Georgia, Secretary of the State Brad Raffensperger, the top election official, faced withering condemnation from Trump and his supporters, including high-ranking Republicans in the state, because he would not produce a bogus excuse to change Biden’s narrow victory — affirmed in multiple recounts — into a Trump win. Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, likewise stood firm.

In Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona, Republican-controlled legislatures resisted calls, including directly from Trump, to insert themselves into the election process and challenge or seek to invalidate electors won by Biden through the vote of the people.

Had these elected leaders chosen to follow Trump over the cliff in his attempt to invalidate the election results, their actions would have been illegal and unconstitutional. But for Trump it could have worked. If enough chaos were created, if the courts were unable to respond quickly enough, Biden could have been denied, in time, the 270 electoral college votes required to win the presidency. That would have tossed the election to the U.S. House of Representatives, where Trump would almost certainly have prevailed because Republicans control the majority of delegations in the each-state-gets-one-vote process.

It is frightening to imagine the social upheaval that would have resulted if Trump successfully stole the election in that manner and what he might have done in response.

Even in his latest, last-ditch effort, Trump, unabashedly and brazenly, seeks this outcome.

“Defendant States have a combined total 62 electoral votes ... if Defendant States are unable to certify 38 or more electors, neither candidate will have a majority of the total number of electors in the electoral college, in which case the election would devolve to the House of Representatives under the Twelfth Amendment,” states the Trump court filing that seeks to invalidate the votes of Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Trump will fail. State Republican officials showed the courage and civic mindedness many of their counterparts in Washington lack. But Trump has caused profound damage, having convinced tens of millions of people who voted for him that Biden is not a legitimate president.

The nation may have dodged a constitutional crisis, but the crisis of a largely dysfunctional and highly divisive political system at the national level shows no signs of abating.

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.