In the old world, the one we lived in before the coronavirus, Sunday would have been primary day in Puerto Rico. A few days earlier, Joe Biden would have probably won Georgia and announced an “insurmountable delegate lead” over Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. President Donald Trump would be holding rally after rally, flying into swing states to demonstrate the enthusiasm gap between him and the Democrats.

That world doesn’t exist anymore, so it’s a good time to answer some questions from readers.

Q: “Does the administration have the legal right to postpone an election due to this pandemic?”

A: Primary elections are run by state governments and in some cases, state parties, and they can be moved rather easily. But the federal election, while administered by state governments, has its date set by federal law. It would take a bipartisan act of Congress to change the date – possible, but not likely. It would take an amendment to the Constitution to delay the inauguration of whoever wins the 2020 election – possible, and even less likely.

But the short answer is no: The Trump administration cannot postpone an election all by itself. The circumstances that would get people thinking about that might be a second coronavirus outbreak in October. But we have six months before early voting gets underway in key states, and there is time for states to come up with contingency voting plans. Could they fritter that time away and fail to fund it? Could some states put comprehensive vote-by-mail in place while other states don’t? Yes and yes.

Q: “What happens to delegates of candidates who won them and later dropped out? Warren has not supported either Biden nor Sanders. Does she still hold on to the delegates she won? Or can she choose where they go?”

A: It’s complicated, and it’s one reason that the delegate counts you see compiled by media outlets can diverge so much. While 3,979 delegates are being allocated by voters in primaries and caucuses, most state parties select the actual delegates – the people who will represent the candidate at the party’s convention – after the voting is over. In Iowa, for example, five candidates got delegates, but only two of them remain in the race. When activists meet at their local conventions, they will elect the actual, flesh-and-blood humans, delegates who will represent Biden and Sanders.

In most states, this will be a boon for Sanders. Every candidate who has quit the race has endorsed Biden, except for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Had they remained active candidates, they could have released those delegates to Biden at the convention. Instead, their departure changes the math for selecting delegates; in the nine states where candidates besides Biden and Sanders won delegates, the local conventions will base their selection on the two-way vote between Sanders and Biden instead.

Q: “Who would benefit from mail-only elections, Republicans or Democrats?”

A: It’s a good question because partisans believe they have the answer already. That’s one reason Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., argued Friday that universal vote-by-mail, which Democrats unsuccessfully tried to fund in the coronavirus response bill, would be “the end of our republic as we know it.” Before the crisis, some Democrats saw vote-by-mail as part of a suite of election reforms, with automatic and same-day voter registration, that would help the party by default. Those policies are frequently opposed by Republicans.

The research on how vote-by-mail affects party performance is actually inconclusive. Laws that suppress turnout or voter activities are typically bad for Democrats; higher turnout can sometimes help Republicans. Anecdotally, however, vote-by-mail has been most popular in states that had strong Democratic leanings or were trending that way: Washington, Oregon and Colorado. Turnout has risen in each state since vote-by-mail was introduced, and Democrats have done well, with Republicans winning a few down-ballot upsets but losing key races. Yet most of that data comes from 2016 and 2018, two years that went badly for Republicans in Western states.

Crises test the limits of our hodgepodge election system, wherein states have wildly different election systems. Even if the federal government funded vote-by-mail across the country, it would be up to each state to determine how ballots are sent; whether all registered voters get ballots automatically, for example, or whether voters must request ballots. The latter system, which is also the easiest to implement – just build on each state’s absentee ballot law – would be the least universal, and probably the worst for Democrats.

Keep in mind that the canvassing, voter registration and even fundraising that both parties planned to spend the next six months doing is on hold, and Democrats had more catch-up to do when it came to changing the electorate.