The Los Angeles Times on what happens if a president-elect dies:

President Donald Trump’s brief hospitalization at the star t of October for COVID-19 treatment spawned a flurry of “what if” discussions that, incongruously enough, proved to be a good thing for the countr y. How? By spotlighting how poorly prepared we are for some worst-case electoral scenarios, and in par ticular, what happens if a presidential candidate dies before Election Day, or if the apparent winner dies after the votes have been counted but before the Electoral College meets?

The good news: With some work, this could be fixable.

Four key dates matter here: Election Day on Nov. 3 (voting is already under way in most states); the Electoral College votes on Dec. 14; a joint session of the new Congress on Jan. 6 to count those electoral votes and cer tify the results; and Inauguration Day on Jan. 20 to install the winner as president. A death or permanent incapacitation at any point along that timeline would create different outcomes, all freighted to different extents by politics.

Many analyses, including one from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Ser vice, agree that if a candidate dies before election day, the par ty that nominated him or her would designate a successor — most likely the party’s vice presidential nominee — and the votes would be counted as if the candidate were still alive. The results would then accrue to the late candidate’s running mate. But each state has its own rules for how to handle the vote, some with more foresight and imaginative planning than others, which could launch a barrage of legal challenges and political maneuvering.

Similarly, if the winner of the most electoral votes dies between Election Day and Dec. 14, the day each state’s electoral voters meet to cast their ballots, by most assessments the states could require the electoral votes go to that candidate’s running mate — but that is not set in stone in ever y state. Again, cue the lawyers.

And if the winning candidate dies after the electoral college votes are recorded but before the results are certified, Congress could upend ever ything. When Congress meets in Januar y to review the electoral votes, members are allowed to raise objections to any state’s tally. If the two chambers agree to uphold the objection, Congress could then award that state’s electoral votes to a different person. The most likely scenario, however, is that under the 20th Amendment governing presidential succession, the mantle would fall on the newly elected vice president’s shoulders.

But with the ages of the current candidates, and with the health scare faced down by one of them, we can see that rocky road more clearly now, and less hypothetically. After the dust from this election settles, it would make sense for the saner heads in Congress and in the major parties to craft, as a bipar tisan gift to the nation, a more unified and detailed process for how to handle such an unwelcome turn of events.

The New York Daily News on baseball’s COVID-19 response

It wasn’t winter’s approach or the fact their team rightly belongs in Brooklyn and not Los Angeles that cast a pall Tuesday night over the Dodgers’ World Series win over the Tampa Bay Rays.

What spoiled the night was when Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner, who’d left the game abruptly in the seventh inning after learning he’d tested positive for COVID-19, decided to break league rules and return to the field to celebrate, unmasked and not distanced, when his teammates clinched the Series.

Turner’s unwillingness to sacrifice those minutes of exuberance was extraordinarily selfish, and the worst possible message he could have sent to millions of baseball fans watching.

League officials’ reluctance to enforce rules that should have kept Turner in isolation was reminiscent of MLB’S early mishandling of the pandemic, when lax rules for players’ offfield behavior and refusal to limit game locations sparked outbreaks that nearly canceled the entire season.

While baseball bumbled and the NFL has fumbled, the NHL and NBA showed the way. Their players faced rigid testing and quarantine protocols and sacrificed seeing family and friends to play in bubbles. In both indoor leagues, COVID was quashed.

Containing a virus, it turns out, is not a game.