Hi and welcome back to Amicus. This is Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and the Supreme Court and the rule of law. And for the next couple of episodes, it's also a show about whether American democracy can, well, survive the 2020 elections. This is part of our Who Counts project that we've launched here at Slate.

If you are anything like me, you have probably spent this past week with like one ear on the impeachment trial in the Senate,

the other ear at the U.S. Supreme Court listening to arguments, maybe a hand on the phone, your face in the keyboard.

It's a little move I like to call Rule of Law Twister, and you could be forgiven if you're

feeling just a tiny bit pretzely from all of the maneuvers.

We've been covering impeachment on what next and on Trumpcast and online at Slate, and the

court arguments in judiciary have been covered so well by Mark Stern in the magazine.

So everything is out there for you, but we are all in on the principle that the one thing, the only thing that can truly matter anymore, is the 2020 election.

And also, too, a question that many of us are just not yet paying a lot of attention to, which is

whether and how that election can be free and fair. And that is the question at the very core

of the arguments presented on the Senate floor this week during impeachment. Here's Adam Schiff.

Impeachment exists for cases in which the conduct of the president rises beyond mere

policies, disputes to be decided otherwise and without urgency at the ballot box.

Instead, we are here today to consider a much more grave matter, and that is an attempt to use the powers of the presidency to cheat in an election.

For precisely this reason, the president's misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box.

For we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won.

So that's Adam Schiff, telling us what probably we don't want to think about, which is there is a really tight connection between what's happening in the well of the Senate this week and what's going to happen in November of 2020.

And so this week we are launching our election meltdown series. And it's being done in tandem with our voting law Sherpa, Rick Hassan.

It is completely rooted in his election meltdown book. And we are yes asking you unfairly perhaps to add one more item to your teeming cart of constitutional democracy projects.

And that is voting.

Slate Plus members are going to get an additional

episode of Amicus every week during this special election meltdown series. You're going to get

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