This is an I-Heart podcast.

Welcome to Solvable. I'm Jacob Weisberg.

Think now about the scenes from the Michigan State House.

Militia members carrying AR-15s.

It's the most shocking thing you can imagine.

It's shocking, and we're going to have a risk of seeing too much of that kind of thing.

The stakes are extremely high for this year's election.

Experts had anticipated the largest turnout in a century.

States were registering voters and preparing their precincts.

And then COVID-19 hit.

Priorities suddenly shifted.

You know, you don't want a governor being able to say, oh, I'm going to postpone an

election. I mean, we've had elections in this country under all kinds of dire circumstances,

wars, and in fact, pandemics in the past. But having the paper ballot, having that backup so that you

can do an audit, so that you can see if there was fraud, so that you can do a recount.

That turns out to be the best system of all.

Is there an argument other than the purely partisan one that more voting may advantage

one party versus the other?

You're more likely to be struck by lightning than commit in-person voter impersonation in the United

States. But there are other real hurdles to this year's election. With millions of Americans

vulnerable to a deadly pandemic, social distancing measure is now a familiar part of life,

and the country facing what is perhaps the largest economic crisis in

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