How to Steal a Presidential Election

From two distinguished experts on election law, an alarming look at how the American presidency could be stolen—by entirely legal means.

Even in the fast and loose world of the Trump White House, the idea that a couple of thousand disorganised protestors storming the U.S. Capitol might actually prevent a presidential succession was farfetched. There are, however, perfectly legal ways of overturning election results that would allow a political party to install its own candidate in place of the true winner.

Lawrence Lessig and Matthew Seligman work through every option available for subverting a presumptively legitimate result—from vice-presidential intervention to election decertification and beyond. While many strategies would never pass constitutional muster, Lessig and Seligman explain the ways that some of them might. They expose correctable weaknesses in the system, including one that could be corrected only by the Supreme Court.

Any strategy aimed at hacking a presidential election is a threat to democracy. How to Steal a Presidential Election is a clarion call to shore up the insecure system for electing the president before American democracy is forever compromised.