We’re less than a week out from the presidential election, and Joe Biden is by all accounts the favorite to win both the Electoral College and the popular vote. Then again, so was Hillary Clinton. Though polling methods have been tweaked for accuracy in the intervening years, there remains a note of hesitation in liberals’ predictions about this race: defeat hurts bad enough without the shock of having been certain of victory.

A couple of plausible scenarios in particular have anti-Trump partisans on edge. First is the possibility that Donald Trump wins the Electoral College outright despite losing the popular vote, as happened in 2016. Second is the prospect that Trump has an Electoral College lead with many mail-in ballots yet to be counted, empowering the Right to launch a campaign of convincing state legislators and governors, and eventually the Supreme Court, to circumvent a free and fair vote count, resulting in a Trump victory.

This second scenario is frequently referred to in the press as “stealing the election.” In reality, both of these scenarios constitute a form of election stealing, as they both represent victory over the will of the majority, not by way of it. If either of them comes to pass, Americans should view it as an indictment of the nation’s undemocratic political institutions and make clear the illegitimacy of the outcome.