No supreme court majority,

[Mendocino]

is by repub design. It is an essential part of the scheme to the elect the orange turd, if it comes down to it again. Remember 2000.

[BlueStreak]

1. At least with a 4-4 court, they can't easily pull another "Florida 2000"

[Mendocino]

2. Like instant replay,

if it's not conclusive it stands. They are hedging their bets.

[Crash2Parties]

3. So, by law what exactly happens if an entire state's election results are called into question?

What if Trump gets a little help from Putin? More specifically, Putin's hackers. They won't need to actually break in and change votes (although some states systems have security weak enough that it could be done). All they have to do is either,

A.)Trigger a massive DDOS attack so that American segments of the Internet are unusable Tuesday night and counties cannot update to their central state office.
or,
B.)Simply break into enough systems, and make it obvious they did so. No need to do anything else, just provide Trump with enough that he can call the election results into question.

Or both. Do 'B' and use 'A' as a diversion.

[Princess Turandot]

4. In 2000, Bush v. Gore, I believe SCOTUS overturned a lower court ruling...

ordering the recount to go forward. With a 4-4 tie with the current court, the lower court ruling would have been upheld.

They obviously don't want a Dem SCOTUS appointment. But the 4-4 tie has gone against the conservatives more often than not this year, esp. in the various cases brought against Republican Secs of State on voting changes.

[Crash2Parties]

5. Q: do they have to appoint Comrade Trumpski?

Or are there arcane rules about a group they can choose from, as happens if no one garnered 270 electorals?

[Mendocino]

6. It's not they want 4-4,

but that they wanted no risk of an Obama appointee, even a moderate one. By putting it off for however long and the RW tendency to circumvent congress by relying on a right leaning court, it works to their advantage. They didn't want a left friendly court in case of another election stalemate.