Hi, and welcome back to Amicus and to this part three of our special election meltdown series where we are asking somewhat fancifully whether American democracy can actually survive the 2020 election.

I'm Dahlia Lithwick.

I cover the courts and the law and a bunch of other stuff for Slate.

And with me doing this series is Rick Hassan.

He's election law professor and author of the book Election Melt, on which this special series is based.

Welcome back, Rick.

Hi there, Dahlia. What a year this week has been?

You know, I was thinking that somehow, since this series has started, we've hit the trifecta of all of our issues that we're talking about, and we've done it in like a day

in Iowa.

Thank you, Iowa.

For the inability of the Iowa Democratic Party to count votes in a timely fashion.

You've probably heard we don't know the results.

What a night.

Unbelievable.

So we don't know all the results.

It is too close to call.

So I'm just going to tell you what I do know.

That screw-up has been extremely unfair to the people of Iowa.

Are we done yet?

But we know by the time it's all said and done, Iowa, you have shocks the nation.

We are here at part three of the series, and this part is meant to be dirty tricks.

But let's back up and say if we had to use what happened this week in Iowa as a test case.

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