I can’t help but feel like a civil war is a different scenario. Russia currently controls 20% of Ukraine. For the sake of simplicity, that’s 10 US states. I have a very hard time believing that if a foreign country had complete control of 10 states, and the majority of the people of those states, for all intents and purpose were unable to vote, an election would go over smoothly. I have to imagine it would be an utter shitshow.
Practically, if the US was actually occupied by a foreign force (having a puppet president doesn’t count), then the occupied areas will not be able to cast their ballots, and the states being partially occupied will have a biased result and electors will be appointed by those living in unoccupied areas. If a whole state is occupied, they probably would have electoral votes that are not cast (since they wouldn’t have a certificate of ascertainment from the now defunct state government). Election would get very ugly even if its a 51/49 split in the remaining electoral college votes since if, say, a state with 18 electors is occupied, one side could get 265 electoral votes and the other gets 255 electoral votes, so there would be a constitutional crisis on whether this counts as a majority (265/520) or not a majority (265/538).
But I’m guessing they’ll go by Civil War precedent and just exclude the occupied states from being counted so its probably 520 as the total electoral votes using that same example.
1864 begs to differ.
Don’t forget 1812 either.
I can’t help but feel like a civil war is a different scenario. Russia currently controls 20% of Ukraine. For the sake of simplicity, that’s 10 US states. I have a very hard time believing that if a foreign country had complete control of 10 states, and the majority of the people of those states, for all intents and purpose were unable to vote, an election would go over smoothly. I have to imagine it would be an utter shitshow.
Practically, if the US was actually occupied by a foreign force (having a puppet president doesn’t count), then the occupied areas will not be able to cast their ballots, and the states being partially occupied will have a biased result and electors will be appointed by those living in unoccupied areas. If a whole state is occupied, they probably would have electoral votes that are not cast (since they wouldn’t have a certificate of ascertainment from the now defunct state government). Election would get very ugly even if its a 51/49 split in the remaining electoral college votes since if, say, a state with 18 electors is occupied, one side could get 265 electoral votes and the other gets 255 electoral votes, so there would be a constitutional crisis on whether this counts as a majority (265/520) or not a majority (265/538).
But I’m guessing they’ll go by Civil War precedent and just exclude the occupied states from being counted so its probably 520 as the total electoral votes using that same example.
I see where you’re coming from, though I would argue that if we’re at war in '28 it won’t be because the US was invaded by a foreign power.