Authorities in North Carolina are working diligently to ensure that residents in the western part of the state can vote following the severe rain and floods caused by Hurricane Helene, which led to the destruction of several election board offices and a temporary halt in mail services.
By late Monday, more than a dozen election board offices in the hilly area, with Asheville among them, had to shut down, and there’s still no mail delivery, as reported by The New York Times.
Absentee voting is already underway across the state. The period for early in-person voting is scheduled from Oct. 17 to Nov. 2, leading up to Election Day on Nov. 5.
In this predominantly rural area, which spans 11 counties, there are approximately 570,000 registered voters out of the total 7.7 million in the state. This includes 145,000 Democrats and 185,000 Republicans, as noted by the newspaper.
Additional challenges include securing alternative locations for voting due to the damage caused by Helene, which ravaged the southeast as a tropical storm following its landfall in Florida as a Category 4 hurricane on Thursday. There’s also the issue of aiding residents forced to evacuate their homes due to the destruction.
“State Board staff have contacted election officials in the affected counties in Western North Carolina to make sure they are safe, to gather information on damage to election and voting facilities, and to assess potential effects on absentee and in-person voting,” the North Carolina board of elections stated.
To assist those impacted by the hurricane, state election officials have introduced a dedicated webpage, ncsbe.gov/Helene. This site is intended as a “source of information for voters affected by the hurricane” and will “include information on county board office closures, tips for voters affected by the storm, and basic information about voting in this election,” according to the state board of elections.
The havoc caused by Helene has also extended to other pivotal states, including Florida and Georgia.