Hurricane Sandy Brings Obstacles Before Election Hurricane Sandy spurred Maryland to suspend its early voting program for a second day on Tuesday and forced the closing of some early voting sites in battleground states like North Carolina and Virginia. But the bigger question that many state and county elections officials in storm-battered states were asking themselves was how to get ready for Election Day next week. The obstacles are formidable. More than 8.2 million households were without power by midday Tuesday, with more than a fifth of them in swing states - a potential problem in an age when the voting process, which once consisted of stuffing paper ballots into boxes, has been electrified. Roads were impassable in some states, and mass transportation was hobbled in others. And Postal Service disruptions threatened to slow the delivery of absentee ballots to election boards. The storm revived an uncomfortable debate, last raised after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, about what to do in the event that a disaster interfered with an election. The attacks led New York City to postpone its mayoral primary, which was already in progress that morning when the hijacked airplanes hit the World Trade Center. There are legal ways to change the date of a presidential election, said Jerry H. Goldfeder, a prominent election lawyer and special counsel at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan. One would require Congress to choose a new date. It was not until 1845 that Congress decided there should be a single date for presidential electors to be chosen in the states, the Tuesday immediately following the first Monday in November. But there is also a federal law that gives states the opportunity to try again if they fail to choose electors on Election Day. "Whenever any State has held an election for the purpose of choosing electors, and has failed to make a choice on the day prescribed by law, the electors may be appointed on a subsequent day in such a manner as the legislature of such State may direct," the law says. Mr. Goldfeder wrote a law review article in 2005 arguing that Congress should clarify what should be done if a terrorist attack or a disaster upended an election, so that states would not come up with their own disparate solutions. But he said in an interview on Tuesday that even without such action, Congress could change the date of the election in the event of an emergency, or that states that failed to choose electors on Election Day could effectively attempt a do-over under federal law. "Legally it's simple," Mr. Goldfeder said. But historically, politically and logistically, it would be a highly extraordinary and unique event in American history. Officials in many states were making preparations to ensure that residents would be able to vote. In Maryland, Gov. Martin O'Malley issued an executive order extending early voting hours through Friday to make up for the days lost to the storm. Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania extended the deadline for county elections offices to take applications for absentee ballots. And many states were coordinating with county officials to prepare their polling places for next week. Some of the hardest-hit counties in New York have begun weighing the possibility of moving their voting sites at the 11th hour. For now, most election officials say they believe that they will be ready for voting on Tuesday. Matt McClellan, a spokesman for the Ohio Secretary of State's Office, said that county boards across the state had prepared contingency plans for any emergencies. "Our office is staying in touch with boards of elections," he said in an e-mail, "and we are confident that at this point in time local boards are prepared." A spokesman for the Virginia State Board of Elections, Justin Riemer, said that only about 10 of the state's 134 early voting sites were closed on Tuesday and that the state expected to be ready for Election Day. "We don't believe there are going to be any lingering power outages for Election Day," he said, noting that utilities were being asked to give priority to restoring power at polling places. But some voting sites may have to be moved in New York, which was battered by the storm. John Conklin, a spokesman for the State Board of Elections, said local elections officials "are assessing what their poll sites look like right now." He added, "They're looking whether they have power, whether they are accessible to the public, accessible to getting voting machines in and are structurally sound and safe." In the coming days, Mr. Conklin said, local elections officials will decide whether they have to move some polling places.