I'm in favor of paper ballots too! But surely you see why it's more concerning to say "alright, elections are cancelled, and we won't hold an election again until unaccountable public health experts make a subjective judgment that it's safe". What would happen if they don't?
1. If you're saying "everybody stay home, the NBA is cancelled, the NCAA tournament is cancelled because of the threat of transmission, but we're going to have the entire state parade in front of a bunch of old people who run our polls"... yeah, that might not be a great idea right now. Deciding to either postpone it or do it mail-only seems rather responsible.
2. Postponing it indefinitely is a whole nother can of worms. You can't just postpone the general election for two years until we have a working vaccine.
So, worst case, we're going to have to conduct the general election by mail only. I think it has to be conducted on time in November, though, to avoid giving rise to conspiracy theories (or to tempt people from taking advantage of the situation...)
