This coverage is also part of a partnership between Grist and BPRa public radio station serving western North Carolina.
It’s been a little over a month since Hurricane Helene tore through the southeastern United States and claimed land hundreds of lives and causes an approx $53 billion dollars in damages. In addition to a record storm in its own rightHelene was also the first hurricane in US history to hit two battleground states within weeks of a major election.
In North Carolina, one of seven swing states likely to decide the outcome of the presidential race this week, Helene’s destruction displaced thousands of people, caused hundreds of road closures and disrupted mail just weeks before early voting began in the state. More than 20 post offices were still redirecting mail from October 22.
North Carolina’s Board of Elections acted quickly to ensure that people affected by the storm retain their right to vote, the approval of a resolution to extend early voting deadlines and ease some restrictions around absentee ballots, among other actions, in the 13 western counties worst affected by Helene. Despite these measures, a question still loomed: Would the storm dampen voter turnout?
As early voting closes, data released by local officials points in Helene’s way voter enthusiasm has not waned. Indeed, a reverse trend may be underway. North Carolina and Georgia, the other battleground states affected by Helene, reported record-breaking early voting numbers: Voter turnout has 2012, 2016 surpassedand, in North Carolina, 2020 — a pandemic election year when many people voted early to avoid crowds.
The North Carolina Board of Elections announced that there 4 million ballots cast in the state as of Friday, November 1 at 2 p.mapproximately 51 percent of North Carolina’s total registered voters and the state’s largest year for early voting ever.
“Even the counties in western North Carolina most affected by Hurricane Helene don’t seem to have massively lower early voter turnout rates,” said Jowei Chen, an associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan who studies redistricting and studied political geography. “It is possible that the convenience of postal voting and early voting mitigated the potentially negative effects of the hurricane on voters.”
Chen noted that while displaced voters can request a mail-in ballot sent to their new, temporary residences, it is inevitable that some of these hurricane victims will fall through the cracks as they deal with the logistical and mental burden of disaster recovery.
The high turnout in North Carolina and Georgia is a testament to the stakes of this election, widely considered one of the most consequential of the 21st century, as well as the Republican Party’s embracing early voting this cycle. But election officials’ response to Hurricane Helene also opened new avenues for affected and displaced voters to participate. Disaster researchers say that the federal and state disaster relief process itself likely affects both how voters turn out to vote and who they vote for.
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In Avery County, North Carolina, polling places for storm-damaged Roaring Creek, Ingalls and Plumtree were consolidated into Riverside Elementary School. Mid-day on Thursday, pollsters sat down and ate lunch while teachers went in and out of school to pick up supplies to deliver to hard-hit areas around the country. Although the day was slow, workers said they saw between 600 and 700 people cast their ballots that week — more, they said, than in previous years.
One county over, in hard-hit Spruce Pine, the largest town in heavily Republican Mitchell County, about a dozen early voters headed to the volunteer fire department to cast their ballots in an hour. The site, which is in the city center and surrounded by wide, well-paved roads and parking lots, remains easily accessible. One voter, who gave her name as Lauren, said it was easier to vote early than to wait for Election Day because she owns a campground that was affected by the flooding and has cleanup work to do.
Previous research has shown that a hurricane can both suppress and induce voters. An otherwise politically engaged person who has had his or her home destroyed in a major disaster may deprioritize getting out a ballot in favor of prioritizing something else that is more urgent, such as rebuilding their home.
On the other hand, voters who received disaster relief, federal or otherwise, after a storm may be more likely to vote, and some studies show, vote for the current party (the party responsible for delivering that financial aid). Research also shows that people who have done this not receive sufficient help from the government, are similarly inclined to vote, but for the challenging party.
James Robinson, a welder who cast his ballot Thursday at the Spruce Pine voting center, said he was a Trump voter before the hurricane and he will be one after. Robinson suffered house damage from Helene. He did not lose everything, as some did, but the experience reaffirmed his beliefs. “The government’s response here has been pathetic,” Robinson said, referring to what he said has been a slow response as he and his neighbors cut themselves out of their own driveways.
Thirty miles away, in Madison County, a majority Republican area not far from Asheville, Francine, a 67-year-old small business owner who asked that her last name be withheld, has been a registered voter for 10 years. Her home was not badly damaged by Helene, but many of her neighbors’ homes and businesses, and her town’s infrastructure, were destroyed. “You go a few miles in any direction and it’s just terrible,” she said.
Days before the storm hit, Francine woke up in the middle of the night with a gastrointestinal obstruction and spent eight days in the hospital recovering. When she was discharged, she came home and noticed that she had not received her voter registration card in the mail, but her husband had. Over the past year, North Carolina removed nearly 750,000 registrants in an attempt to delete duplicates, the deceased and other ineligible voters from its electoral rolls. Francine wonders if she was mistakenly counted among them. But she was not yet well enough to drive to the election office to sort it out. The day she had to have her stitches removed, Hurricane Helene hit. Francine’s husband removed the stitches himself while the storm raged around them.
Two weeks ago, Francine was finally able to drive to her local elections office and prove to the officer that an error on her recently renewed driver’s license had resulted in her registration being improperly purged by the state. She cast her vote for Kamala Harris early last week, and was surprised by how many people she saw also voted early.
Francine’s main issues are women’s rights, separation of church and state, and American involvement in conflicts abroad. She wasn’t happy with either candidate, but she said she couldn’t vote for Trump. The former president’s response to the hurricane, which threw gasoline on the fire of false rumors and conspiracy theories that surfaced after the storm further soured her on his candidacy. “Everyone is pointing fingers at each other and it’s just getting really ugly,” she said. “Everyone is so worked up that I think the turnout is going to be big.”
This story has been updated.
