The COVID-19 pandemic has undermined the capacity of states to hold elections. As a result, states are confronted with the following dilemma. While elections in accordance with international standards should be held at regular intervals, elections likewise pose a risk of spreading the disease due to the human-to-human contacts that occur especially during in-person voting on election day. There is thus a tension between states’ duty to protect the rights to life and health of their citizens and their duty to respect the right to political participation and related political freedoms. To overcome this tension, various solutions have been introduced, such as sanitary measures mitigating the risk of contracting the virus during in-person voting, alternative voting methods allowing individuals to cast their ballot outside the polling station or postponement of elections to a later date when elections can be held safely. Still, it is difficult to tackle how to move forward with elections in times of pandemic and, most importantly, whether to hold or postpone elections. This contribution provides an international human rights perspective to assess the available options. It argues that while international human rights leave some leeway to states to decide what fits best for their domestic context, they also give guidance as to whether to hold or postpone elections. This contribution concludes that although certain limitations of electoral standards may be permissible in extraordinary times, international human rights, at the same time, set limits on state action and require that a minimum core of electoral principles be upheld at any time for elections to be meaningful and trustworthy to the public.