North Carolina Rebuilds Election Infrastructure in Counties Decimated by Helene

Nearly every state has statutory guidelines for keeping things on track if a disaster or emergency threatens to disrupt election processes; it’s not in the nature of election officials to leave things to chance. Those who work in the Southeast United States know that presidential election season and hurricane season run together — but the historic rain and flooding Helene brought to North Carolina is asking more of them than they could have anticipated.

“It took me seven to eight days to get my personal and family situation worked out where we could survive," says Cliff Marr, director of elections in Polk County, N.C. “I couldn’t even think about work.” Still, he considers himself fortunate. If a tree didn't fall through your house, you’re way ahead of the game, he says.

As much as it’s endured, Marr’s community isn’t the hardest hit among the 25 counties in Western N.C. declared disaster areas by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Interruption of power, cell service and water, and impassable roads have forced a reimagining of what will be needed to enable everyone who wants to vote to do so. State and local officials have acted quickly and in a bipartisan manner to set guidelines for doing what needs to be done to be ready on Oct. 17, when early voting begins, officials told Governing.

After consulting county election officials in affected communities, the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) unanimously adopted a resolution regarding the conduct of elections in counties most affected by Helene. The measures in it, they noted, “have been carefully crafted to avoid any detrimental effect on the integrity of the election or the security of ballots.”

On Oct. 9, the state assembly unanimously passed a Disaster Recovery Act that included the emergency election modifications the board had adopted. The NCSBE had intended them to apply to 13 counties, but the Legislature expanded them to all 25 counties in the FEMA disaster area.

The bill was signed by the governor the next day, giving county officials the flexibility to work around Helene’s disruptions.

Dislocated Voters and Polling Places

Marr says the response by the state officials has been phenomenal. “They came to us, asked us ‘What are the things you need?’” he says. “That’s what they took back [to the statehouse], and the Legislature’s backing it up.”

The modifications allowed in affected counties (see map) offer strategies to accommodate voters who have been displaced and infrastructure that has been destroyed or damaged, including polling places themselves. Before they are implemented in a county they must be approved by a majority bipartisan vote of its county election board.

Emergency measures allow for such things as addition, removal and relocation of polling places, including to other precincts or adjacent counties. Polling places may serve voters from more than one precinct. Voters are allowed to return an absentee ballot in a county other than the one in which they are registered during the early voting period (Oct. 17-Nov. 2).

Multipartisan teams authorized and trained by county boards will be allowed to assist voters in disaster shelters or other relief areas with absentee ballots, providing them ballots and returning completed ballots to county board offices if needed. (This practice is already allowed in N.C. in certain care facilities.)

Some local boards have already met to discuss these and other measures in the emergency legislation, says Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of NCSBE. The board in Buncombe County, one of the most severely impacted and populous in the disaster area, has already announced its revised plan for early voting, which includes new times and locations for early voting.

These kinds of decisions would ordinarily require unanimous approval by a county board, Bell says. But under the circumstances, some board members may be unable to attend an emergency meeting, making that requirement unworkable, officials say.

The bill from the General Assembly allows a bipartisan majority to adopt the measures it believes are needed. In Marr’s experience, bipartisanship is the norm among county election boards in his state. They have five members — two from each party and one appointed by the governor. In nine years, he’s never seen a vote along party lines, he says.

Needs and Resources

State officials have helped clear the path, but the work that lies ahead is daunting.

“I’ve heard the Buncombe County director say that Asheville city water won’t even be on by election day,” Marr says. “I think they’re going to try to open in the neighborhood of 40 polling sites on election day.” No water means as many as 80-100 porta potties at these sites, a “logistical nightmare,” he says.

Voting machines have significant battery life, but backup generators will be needed in places where power hasn’t been restored, Marr says. Temporary structures may be needed. Bell has been working with FEMA to have access to tents or trailers.

Thanks to the hurricane, Marr’s office lost precious workdays at a critical time. He’s having to hire extra workers to get things done in a now-compressed time period, he says. He’ll need to send letters to everyone affected by changes to polling locations and is going to ask for help with costs for ‘’massive amounts” of signage to direct voters to new polling places. (The Legislature has allocated $5 million to NCSBE to help county offices meet their needs. Election office budgets were already depleted by the cost of reprinting ballots aftera September ruling from the state Supreme Court that ballots could not include the name of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after he suspended his candidacy in late August.)

Despite these difficulties, Marr counts his county among those in the disaster area that will have a relatively easy time getting back to normal operations compared to others that have lost many more polling sites and experienced even greater infrastructure damage.

One of the biggest challenges throughout the disaster area is getting information to voters about changes in voting places and times, as well as the emergency options available to them. At a recent media briefing, Bell reported that the Postal Service is able to deliver mail to and from board offices in affected counties, one possible option for disseminating information to voters. However, it’s not a given that residents (or their residences) remain in place. Volunteers for assistance teams can make up the difference by reaching voters in person at relief centers.

Geography is presenting additional problems. Some of the mountain communities hard hit by Helene are isolated even when roads haven’t been damaged. In some, supplies are still being delivered by foot. CSBE is asking such counties if they need transport to ensure voters stranded away from polling places can vote. “If that needs to be a horse, if that needs to be a helicopter, we will make that ask,” Bell told reporters. “We have all indications from our state and federal partners that they will help us figure out a way.”

A Service to Voters

North Carolina didn’t experience the post-2020 controversy over results that continues to resonate in nearby states, but it is a battleground state in 2024. In 2023, state legislators enacted a number of changes to voting laws, including new ID requirements for in-person voting and mail-in ballots and eliminating a three-day grace period for receipt and counting of ballots postmarked by Nov. 5.

Existing law allows voters who have lost their ID within 100 days of an election due to a natural disaster to vote. But the three-day grace period is still gone — which could lead to a drop off in turnout, says Anne Tindall, special counsel for Protect Democracy. Given the devastation around the state, some people may not be able to meet the deadline, or they may simply have other things on their mind altogether, Tindall says.

Even if this happens, however, she doesn’t expect it to benefit one party over the other, or have a significant impact on the outcome of the election in the state. Fewer than 1 in 5 registered voters live in the 28 disaster counties. Buncombe County, one of the largest in the affected area, which experienced “biblical devastation” according to local officials, was one of the two N.C. counties that Biden won in 2020.

The disruption in Buncombe doesn’t automatically advantage either side, says Veronica Degraffenreid, a senior manager for the Brennan Center. (She lives in N.C. and served as director of election operations for NCSBE for seven years.) The disruption could leave the glass half full for either party.

In Moore County, several jurisdictions east of the disaster area, elections director Towanna Dixon is fielding calls from people worried that the election will be compromised. “They’re trying to figure it out how it’s going to be possible for North Carolina to pull this off because they don’t know our processes,” she says.

But they need not worry about the integrity of results or about election logistics, she says. It’s the job of election officials to make the service of voting available, Dixon tells callers. She walks them through safeguards and everything that is being done to make this service secure and accessible, including for those who are dislocated or traumatized. This despite the fact that election workers have lost homes themselves.

“We don’t campaign for candidates, and we don’t campaign for voters,” Dixon says. “We offer the election process to the voter. It’s their responsibility to come out.”

Uncertain Territory

Florida was recovering from Helene when Milton cut across the state two weeks later. After Helene, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order to assist election officials in affected counties. Among other provisions, it allows them to change the location of early voting sites and dropboxes, to move election day polling places to another precinct if necessary, and eases restrictions on mail-in ballot requests.

DeSantis issued similar executive orders when hurricanes Michael (2018) and Ian (2022) struck his state before election periods. It’s important to have enough state and federal funding to have as many voting sites open as possible, says Kevin Morris, a Brennan Center researcher. He found that after Michael, the biggest negative effect on turnout was lack of funding to open emergency polling places, with turnout decreasing with every mile a resident had to travel to vote.

Mark Earley, supervisor of elections for Leon County, Fla., expects Gov. DeSantis to broaden his order to encompass counties affected by Milton. “It’s a new situation for everybody involved to have two major hurricanes striking such a broad swath of the state this close together,” he says. “This is very uncertain territory."