Elections during wartime have always gone forward in the United States, and the legal structure is built to keep it that way. Federal terms expire on hard constitutional deadlines — noon on January 20 for the President, January 3 for Congress — with no wartime exception, no emergency extension, and no mechanism for a president to postpone a federal election unilaterally. The country has held every scheduled federal election through every war in its history, including the Civil War.
Why the Election Date Cannot Simply Slip
The Constitution does not say “elections must be held during war.” It does something more effective: it sets fixed terms and lets them run out. The President serves four years, Representatives two, Senators six. When those terms end, the offices go vacant.
The Twentieth Amendment fixes the endpoints precisely. The presidential term ends at noon on January 20; congressional terms end on January 3. Nothing in the amendment softens those dates for wartime.
Congress locks in the voting day itself by statute. One law sets the day for choosing presidential electors as “election day” under each state’s laws.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 3 USC 1 – Time of Appointing Electors A companion statute sets the same Tuesday after the first Monday in November for electing Representatives and Senators.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 2 USC 7 – Time of Election The result is an interlocking system: the day is fixed by federal law, and the terms expire by constitutional command.
The Historical Record
The system has been stress-tested repeatedly, and it has never failed.
The Civil War, 1864
The starkest example is 1864. Lincoln ran for reelection against his former commanding general, George McClellan, whose platform was negotiating peace with the Confederacy. The eleven seceded states did not participate. Among the remaining Union states, nineteen passed laws allowing soldiers to vote from the field, producing the first large-scale absentee voting in American history. Ballots moved through encampments and field hospitals in the war zone. About 78 percent of soldiers’ ballots went to Lincoln, and he won overall with roughly 55 percent of the popular vote and 212 electoral votes to McClellan’s 21.
World War I and the 1918 Pandemic
The 1918 midterms went ahead with a war overseas and the deadliest pandemic of the modern era at home. Bans on public gatherings pushed campaigning into newspapers and mailed literature. Turnout fell to roughly 40 percent from about 50 percent in the prior midterm, but the election was held on schedule and postponement was not seriously entertained.
World War II, 1944
Roosevelt’s fourth campaign coincided with more than 16 million Americans in uniform and about 11.5 million stationed overseas. Congress passed the Soldier Voting Acts of 1942 and 1944 to get ballots to service members on every front. The 1944 compromise encouraged states to update their own absentee procedures and offered a federal backup ballot governors could adopt voluntarily.3The American Presidency Project. Message to Congress on a Bill to Facilitate Voting by Members of the Armed Forces States cooperated well enough for the election to proceed across every theater of war.
Who Can Actually Move a Federal Election
Only Congress can move the date of a federal election. Article II, Section 1 gives Congress authority over the timing of choosing presidential electors.4Congress.gov. Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section 1 Article I, Section 4 gives Congress overlapping power over the time, place, and manner of congressional elections.5Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute. States and the Elections Clause A Congressional Research Service analysis put the point plainly: “neither the Constitution nor Congress provides any power to the President or other federal officials to change this date outside of Congress’s regular legislative process.”6Congressional Research Service. Election Day – Frequently Asked Questions
The President cannot postpone or cancel a federal election by executive order, wartime or not. No statute grants that power and no constitutional provision supports it.
Congress itself is boxed in. The Constitution requires Representatives to be chosen “every second year,” and the Seventeenth Amendment sets six-year Senate terms. Congress can shift a date inside those windows by amending the statute, but it cannot postpone elections indefinitely without breaking the term structure.6Congressional Research Service. Election Day – Frequently Asked Questions
Governors have some room with state-run primaries. During the 2020 pandemic, at least twelve governors used emergency orders to move their primaries; Connecticut shifted from April to August, Louisiana from April to July. On September 11, 2001, New York’s governor suspended the state primary being held that morning. General elections for federal office are different: the date is set by federal statute, and no state can move it on its own.
Whether Martial Law or Emergency Powers Change the Answer
They do not. In Duncan v. Kahanamoku (1946), which arose from Hawaii after Pearl Harbor, the Supreme Court held 6-2 that martial law could not replace civilian courts and government functions, even in a territory that had been directly attacked. The reasoning extends to elections. Military authority under martial law exists to restore order, not to replace constitutional governance. The Twentieth Amendment’s dates contain no martial law exception, and no federal emergency statute — including the Insurrection Act — gives any official the power to cancel or postpone a federal election. The country voted through the Civil War, both World Wars, and every military engagement since.
How Service Members Vote While Deployed
The modern framework is the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), enacted in 1986. It requires every state and territory to let service members, their families, and U.S. citizens living abroad register and vote absentee in all federal elections.7U.S. Department of Justice. The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act
UOCAVA created two tools that matter in a war zone. The Federal Post Card Application works as both a registration and an absentee ballot request. The Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot is a backup for service members who requested a ballot but did not receive it in time; they can use it to vote for federal offices.8US Election Assistance Commission. UOCAVA Fact Sheet
The Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (the MOVE Act) added further protections in 2009. States must send ballots to military and overseas voters at least 45 days before a federal election and must offer registration forms, ballot requests, and blank ballots electronically.7U.S. Department of Justice. The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act
The persistent problem is the return trip. A ballot can reach a soldier electronically in hours, but the completed ballot generally has to travel back through military mail. Most states require receipt by Election Day; some accept military ballots postmarked on time and arriving later. That gap between electronic delivery and physical return is where military votes are still most often lost, and it is why the 45-day window matters.
When Courts Have Allowed a Delay
Federal courts have carved out a narrow safety valve. Under what is sometimes called the “exigent circumstances” doctrine, elections for federal office can be rescheduled when a genuine emergency prevents holding them on the prescribed date, and only to the earliest practical alternative.
The leading case is Busbee v. Smith, where Georgia needed to delay elections in two congressional districts because its redistricting plan was blocked under the Voting Rights Act. The federal district court ruled that when circumstances arising before or on Election Day make it impossible to hold the election, the state may postpone to “the earliest practicable date,” and the Supreme Court affirmed. Later courts extended the reasoning to natural disasters, proven fraud, and similar emergencies.
The consistent thread is quick rescheduling, not indefinite delay. For presidential electors specifically, the authority to postpone is less settled; no court has squarely decided whether a statewide postponement of a presidential election is permitted under federal law. The practical takeaway for a country at war is that localized disruptions can be handled through short rescheduling, but a nationwide cancellation has no legal path.
What Happens If an Election Doesn’t Happen
The Constitution has a built-in consequence. Under Section 3 of the Twentieth Amendment, if no President has been chosen by January 20, the Vice President-elect acts as President. If neither has qualified, Congress may designate who acts as President until one qualifies.9Congress.gov. Constitution of the United States, Twentieth Amendment, Section 3
The Presidential Succession Act fills in the specifics. With no President or Vice President, the Speaker of the House acts as President after resigning from Congress. If there is no qualified Speaker, the President pro tempore of the Senate steps in. After that, the line runs through the Cabinet beginning with the Secretary of State.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 3 U.S. Code 19 – Vacancy in Offices of Both President and Vice President
The scenario gets worse fast if congressional elections were also skipped. All 435 House seats have two-year terms, so the entire chamber would empty. Roughly a third of the Senate would also have expired terms. There might be no Speaker to step in, and while the remaining two-thirds of the Senate could try to choose a new President pro tempore, the situation has no clean resolution. That cascading crisis is precisely why the system is engineered to make skipping an election unthinkable in the first place.