Congress can counteract a COVID-19-caused constitutional crisis

Congress should act, quickly and unanimously, to pass simple legislation providing for the awful chance of the death or incapacity of a presidential candidate after ballots already have been printed.

Granted, the Constitution and statutes are unclear about how to handle such a situation, and it is not self-evident that the Constitution’s provisions allow Congress to fill the void with its own prescription. Still, it should be nearly axiomatic that where the Constitution has gaps and tensions that are nearly impossible to reconcile, the national legislature is empowered to provide for major exigencies within those gaps and tensions as long as it acts clearly within the spirit of the constitutional provisions that do apply.