This sounds ominous, the Constitution has no provisions in place for natural disasters:
Could Hurricane Sandy lead to a constitutional crisis? Since 1845,
Congress has mandated that the presidential election take place on the
Tuesday after the first Monday in November. But no one in the waning
days of the Tyler administration anticipated a giant hurricane hitting
the East Coast within a week of Election Day. In fact, there is no
precedent whatsoever for a natural disaster of this scale before a
federal election. A devastating storm, like Sandy, could produce several
constitutional and legal crises if voting can’t take place on November
6.
Keith Gaddie, a professor of political science at the University of
Oklahoma who focuses on elections, notes that, “[while] the Constitution
had mechanisms in place to deal with [the 2000 presidential election],
this one may reside out of the realm of process to resolve.” The
founders saw the risk of electoral ties and close results, but extreme
weather was not a priority in 1787.
