Does anyone have any idea what would happen if we had a severe hurricane or many tornadoes or whatever on election day? Are the early votes cast up until that time just counted and those results stand? Anything is possible.
In general, local and state elections have had more options because you can move the whole election time for everyone. There have been some instances of that. But things are pretty rigid when you are part of a national election. You have to do your thing on election day or be in the mail by then or your votes are not counted regardless of how good an excuse you have such as the forest fire or hurricane in your town or bomb scares down at the local polling places. I think the courts have allowed some emergency moves where it does not move the date, such as allowing voting at the last minute over at another location due to some emergency and then allowing people to continue to vote as long as it takes as long as they are still in line, if your state law provides for that or handing out mail in ballots to be submitted right there type of thing. But trying to vote in a national election after the national election day- that is not going to work no matter how ugly it looks. True, mail in votes may come in after but they must be postmarked before. It sounds like a somewhat obscure question, but not really. It is highly likely that major portions of a state's electronic voting system will eventually shiite-the-bed in some state -maybe/probably even this coming election- which will present the same situation. If they have backup data and can piece it together, well they can work on that after the election. That would be allowable. But if they lose votes, those votes are gone. No do-over or extension past election day, other than for counting or trying to retrieve. So I think the hurricane disaster scenario is more likely to come in the form of a voting machine-database disaster instead.
I was just using hurricane as an example. Your scenario is much more feasible. Appreciate that you took time to answer. Anything can happen.