Sure they would care. They would cheer. Nobody likes Drakenwald.
They can:
A) Declare someone else the EC and do nothing to actually enforce that claim, making their impotence obvious, and looking weak is never good.
B) Go to war to put someone else's ass in the EC seat.
C) Accept that there is now a new loyal province that pays taxes instead of a heavily armed foreign polity.
You can also sell land for a great deal of money to tide you over until you finish clearing some of it.
You assume people, and especially nobles, are rational actors, and not greedy fucks or hubristically prideful fucks or religiously zealous dogmatic fucks that do not quite get the consequences of their own actions.
Sure, the majority could be rational. It also could be not rational. Its a coin toss.
And no, a stupid Elector Count would not be quickly removed, Dieter IV wasn't, and he was an Emperor, and we do not need to even sink as low as Dieter Iv to find people that oppose us.
And of course, there is the problem that a wizard EC could theoretically be ordered by the Emperor or the Supreme Patriarch on the votes, which would open a reasonable can of worms. They can even order us to step down, which realpolitic wise wont work, but it will be a clusterfuck if we want to keep our oaths for Dawi diplomacy and will result in us being labeled a black magister (in command of a province, yeah, but so what ? We were obviously trying to become a traitor/play politics for our own beenefit/do a power grab, so we deserve the label.)
I should clarify, though, that I am not against it, merely stating a possible worst case scenario that could reasonably happen depending on who is who. I am not trying to say that idea is impossible or unfeasible or anything like that, merely that we really should get our ducks in a row (optimally, more ducks than necessary so that people won't backstab us/events do not blindside us) before attempting the conquest, if we decide to go that route.
It's been said by Boney himself that, in fact, anyone who can clear out a big chunk of land from beastmen and such within the Empire's borders is, in fact, going to be recognized as the ruler of that land by ECs. Are you seriously trying to argue WoQM?
Getting land is one thing.
Being an Elector Count (essentially a top dog) is quite another.
We could own huge swathes of land and still be told "Good. Now you pay taxes to this EC because you are his subordinate, because the land is part of his province", because that is how the medieval contract of multiple tiered ownerships works. We could even own so much land that it is subordinate to multiple different ECs, wouldn't give us the voting rights or other legal rights.
