The ping pong match over whether more Texans can vote by mail has paused, with the Texas Supreme Court rejecting the idea that voters can claim lack of immunity from the novel coronavirus and mail in their ballots.

The idea, that is, but not the reality. More on that in a moment.

A separate federal case is still in the works. An appeals court has sided with the state against expanding mail voting. But we urge that court or, if necessary, the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and say all Texans can vote by mail this year. After that, the Legislature should take up the issue in 2021.

The need for this was unintentionally made clear Tuesday, when Secretary of State Ruth Hughs issued two pages of guidance for voters that included bringing your own hand sanitizer and implement for marking a ballot. If the threat weren’t real, there would be no need for such exertions.

The fight against more mail-in voting, led legally by Attorney General Ken Paxton and rhetorically by President Donald Trump and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, centers on the possibility of fraud and even stolen elections. Advocates on the other side say fraud is exceedingly rare.

As usual, the extremes are talking past each other: There’s no evidence of widespread fraud, but it occurs often enough that more precautions and scrutiny are necessary — with some prime examples in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

“Ballot harvesting” schemes, in which mail ballots are intercepted or elderly voters get “help” voting the preferred way, are real. But it’s quite a stretch to say that fraud is rampant. And Paxton and his cohort don’t explain why it’s fine for large groups of Texans, including everyone 65 and older, to vote from home.

The debate will continue. But back to the reality of upcoming elections, including primary runoffs in just six weeks. Texas allows voters to request a mail-in ballot for three chief reasons: disability, plans to be away from home and the aforementioned age threshold.

The state Supreme Court declined to say that fear of catching COVID-19 or heightened vulnerability to it qualifies as a disability. But the justices also did not order — and no federal court is likely to impose — that local elections officials verify voters’ disability claims. They don’t do so now, and it would be an impossible, onerous, invasive task.

“We don’t have any authority to say, ‘You’ve got to show me your air ticket or prove that you have a disability.’ … If you claim you have a disability, you have a disability,” Tarrant County Elections Administrator Heider Garcia said.

We’re not advocating anyone should break the law, but disability clearly is in the eye of the beholder. Even Paxton isn’t willing to dive into ballot applications and prosecute individual voters who wanted to participate in their democracy. (We think.)

All of this strains our election systems. Factor in more age 65-plus voters taking advantage of their option, and many more will be coming in by mail.

County officials are preparing. Garcia said his office has seen a slight uptick in mail-ballot requests for the July 14 runoff, and he expects even more for the November general election.

Processing these requires significant resources. Every application for a ballot must be scrutinized by an elections worker. Did the applicant include the right address? Are all sections of the application complete? Is it signed?

Closer to Election Day, ballots must be printed, along with the envelopes for the voter to return them. If requests are much higher than usual, the county will need greater printing capacity, and Garcia said he’s looking at buying additional equipment.

When the voter returns the ballot, the envelope is scanned as a record of receipt (voters’ signatures are not stored, Garcia said). Then, members of the ballot board — a Republican and a Democrat, working in pairs — examine the application and ballot envelope to determine if signatures match.

If the pair agree, the ballot is counted. If they don’t, a larger group reviews it. Workers must ensure, too, that the voter didn’t also vote in person.

All of this requires more equipment, supplies and workers. County Judge Glen Whitley and Garcia estimate that the runoff will cost Tarrant County between $1.2 million and $1.5 million, compared to a typical $800,000 or so.

“Some of these technologies and things that we are looking at … you can’t walk into Sam’s Club and grab one off the shelf,” Garcia said.

Elections officials will have to make decisions soon. As for whether the state and federal government will help bear the cost due to the unprecedented pandemic emergency, Whitley was blunt: “I’m confident that they won’t.”

Steps must also be taken to reduce risk at polling places, including wiping down equipment frequently and encouraging voters to maintain social distancing. Fewer voting machines may fit in a polling place because of the need to space them farther apart, Garcia noted.

And it’s hard enough to recruit election workers. Whitley noted that many of the most reliable ones are older adults with underlying health conditions who don’t want to risk so much public interaction.

“So, we may have more of a problem getting the number of workers that we need, which could end up causing a longer line or a longer length of time to vote,” Whitley said. And if voters have that experience in the runoff, more might decide to vote by mail instead in the fall.

Remember, too, that the county is also dealing with the first high-turnout election using countywide voting centers, in which voters can use any location. The March primary, conducted just before the pandemic took off in the U.S., saw long lines in some areas.

Whitley said that even as officials expect a higher share of mail-in voting, the county would probably maintain the same number of Election Day polling places as used last year.

With so many complications, voters should anticipate more hurdles to voting than usual and plan accordingly. Take advantage of expanded early voting windows.

And meanwhile, let’s hope that some wise federal judges will recognize that this extraordinary situation calls for more widely available voting by mail.