Presumably they could just switch to voting-by-mail. Some states already do their entire elections that way, some do it parts of the state, and I think every state has provisions for mailing in absentee ballots.
But there would be political implications in that. Without getting outside of GQ rules, one political party supports wider voting by mail and the other party opposes it. So that would become a political question.
P.S. We recently had a similar situation near here. Minnesota held Precinct Caucuses for political parties to begin the process of choosing delegates to endorse for President & other offices. By law, those must be held on the designated date (Feb 25th this year). And Minnesota law also specifies the location for one specific precinct, the one containing the Minnesota Veterans Retirement Home. But that Home had been placed in quarantine on that date!
So we were legally required to hold the caucus on that date, in that location, but it was in quarantine lockdown at the time. Well, we did something similar – we held it by mail. We provided the normal Precinct Caucus Absentee form to people, collected completed ones from the location and accepted any resolutions submitted by residents. It worked fine. And this was all arranged with only a few days notice, by volunteers. I’m sure our Election Officials would be equally capable of arranging a statewide vote-by-mail election if needed.
This is interesting. Please tell me more. Did election workers have to go into the Home in hazmat suits to pass out applications and collect the ballots? If so, did that freak out the residents?
No, the quarantine just meant that nobody else could go into the buildings. It was mainly to keep the elderly, at-risk residents from being exposed to outsiders who might carry infections. Regular staff, delivery trucks, etc. continued to supply the buildings. It didn’t really affect the residents greatly; many of them don’t get around much anymore.
But Precinct Caucuses must be open, public meetings. So we made the Absentee forms available to people (plus they’re downloadable online), and sent a volunteer (no workers here, all party volunteers) to collect them from the Vets Home. No hazmat suit needed, he just went to a desk in the lobby (but not allowed further into the building). Plus we accepted forms via email.
It’s a small, rather inactive precinct as regards political campaigns. The largest caucus attendance I can remember there was 12 people. (But the residents do vote consistently! And the Vets Home is the largest collection of voters in the precinct.)
Quorum in both the Senate and the Reps is a majority of members, not seats. If there are no vacancies in the house (ie there are 435 members), quorum is 218. But if there are vacancies, the quorum goes down. So if 235 Reps die in an epidemic, of be House has 200 members and quorum would be 101. Same rules apply in the Senate.
(If it were otherwise, based on seats not members, then during the Civil War it would have been difficult to make quorum in either house. For example, there were 34 states at the beginning of 1861, for a Senate of 68 seats. Eleven states seceded and stopped sending 22 Senators, so there were 44 members of the Senate. But the Union government’s position was those states were still in the Union. That meant the Senate still had 68 seats (ignoring the new state of West Virginia). If quorum were based on seats, not members, quorum would still be 34, but only 44 senators for quorum. )