Amicus | How To Steal A Presidential Election

·1 hr 7 min·5 clips

Seligman argues Trump has stronger means and a motive to avoid dying in prison, making the 2024 election subversion threat more severe.

The premise is anxious, but practical. Dahlia Lithwick opens with a steady trickle of listener questions about how election results could be challenged, delayed, rewritten, or simply refused. The inbox has turned into a catalog of worries: vote suppression, challengers at the polls, hand recounts, tossed ballots, governors, electors, and certification fights. The episode narrows that fear to the certification chain, where local boards can create trouble before results move upward. Georgia is the concrete test. The guest points to county boards of election, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and Governor Brian Kemp as links in that chain. The key ruling matters right away. A Georgia court rejected a rule that would have let county boards interfere with certification and treated certification as a required ministerial duty. That phrase carries a lot of weight. It means the board is supposed to certify results, not relitigate suspicion or invent politically convenient totals. Disputes still have a place. The guest draws a hard line between recounts, court litigation, and political bodies tempted to bend the process. Courts are imperfect. Still, the argument here is that election fights belong before judges rather than officials with partisan incentives. The practical remedy is blunt. If a county board refuses to certify, or claims conspiracy-based reasons for changing totals, someone goes to court for an order. The same logic applies to governors. A rogue governor who ignores state results and tries to certify electors would run into the same legal structure. The mood stays measured, not soothing. Lithwick gives listeners enough detail to see the pressure points without turning uncertainty into panic.

As heard by us

A clear, measured review of how election law can compel officials to certify results.

As election night approaches, this PlayNext review follows the legal pressure points that have left listeners uneasy: vote suppression, poll challenges, hand recounts, tossed ballots, certification fights, and the fear that procedure could be used to override results.

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Why you'd press play

When election procedure feels like a horror plot, you can use this map of where courts fit in.

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