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.
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.