The last decade have shown me how much of our government is based on handshakes

Often when there are no laws about something it's because most of the key laws of the US were set down 250 years ago when modern communication tech didn't exist, people travelled by horseback, etc.

But, you would think that a procedure to determine if a key member of the government were alive or not would have been even more important 250 years ago. Back when legislators had to travel by horse across rural areas that were unlit at night, it must have been relatively normal for someone to just disappear. Maybe they'd get waylaid by bandits. Maybe attacked by wildlife. Maybe kicked in the head by their horse. Maybe caught in a flash flood.

OTOH, maybe back then "just wait until the next election, even if it's 6 years away" would have been considered reasonable.