The events leading up to Inauguration Day 2021 posed a stress test for America's republican institutions, and we need to be ready should more such tests follow. In particular, proposals to overhaul the nation's electoral institutions should be judged in the light of the lessons of that brush with constitutional extremity. Reforms that shore up what we now can see as critical weaknesses deserve high priority; reforms irrelevant to these dangers might well go to the back burner, if not be set aside for now; and proposals that would actually create new risks of constitutional crisis are unlikely to be right for the moment.
