Desperate efforts by Donald Trump and his Republican allies to overturn the result of the American election are facing an ever narrowing range of options as court cases and recounts have repeatedly failed to make any dent in the convincing victory of Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

Now that states are certifying their election results, it appears that the president’s last-ditch efforts will entail desperate pleas to Republican state lawmakers in hopes that they will ignore their state laws and somehow skew the election to favor his re-election in the all-important electoral college.

It has now been two weeks exactly since Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election, and since then, Republicans and Trump’s campaign have made multiple attempts to take the election results to the courts and woo state Republican officials into helping them subvert the votes of their constituents.

But the effort has largely failed to make meaningful headway with any of the lawsuits in key swing states, and state officials have mostly stuck by the original counts. In just the last few days, Trump’s dream of overturning the results of the election has significantly narrowed after results were certified in Georgia and Arizona’s largest county in Biden’s favor on Friday.

The states were two of six that the Trump campaign and Republicans were targeting in efforts to push slim margins that favored Biden over to Trump. Their haphazard plans have fallen apart as judges across the country halted legal challenges that cried fraud in an election that experts and public officials have said showed no evidence of widespread fraud.

Three other swing states, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, are set to join Georgia in certifying their election results as their certification deadlines approach next week. Arizona and Wisconsin, the last of the state’s targeted by the Trump campaign, have certification deadlines the week after.

Faced with such realities, Trump’s effort seems to be pivoting to try and persuade Republican state politicians in some states to ignore the verdict of the popular vote and send electors for Trump, not Biden, to the electoral college, which is the body that actually selects the new president.

Sidney Powell, one of Trump’s lawyers, told Fox Business Network that “legislatures should make sure that the electors are selected for Trump”.

As states move closer to certify their election results, the legal pathways that even the most impassioned state lawmakers have to  meaningfully change the results in their state are slim. Nor are there many signs that local officials are willing to go along with changes to normal practices in regards to the electoral college.