As part of its response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene, the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) made more emergency changes to how elections will be administered in the 13 hardest-hit counties in the western part of the state.
The NCSBE passed a resolution in a meeting Monday expanding the capabilities of voters affected by the storm to cast their ballot in this year’s election, as well as the ability for county boards of elections to process ballots.
The resolution allows for 13 counties — Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Transylvania, Watauga and Yancey — to amend certain voting norms and operations, so long as they are passed by a bipartisan majority of the county board.
Despite the fact that 25 counties and three tribal areas in the state were included in an emergency declaration, the NCSBE is targeting 13 counties for the new tranche of emergency elections provisions as “infrastructure for elections administration and voters’ accessibility to polling places and mail service” has been “severely disrupted as a result of the disaster and will continue to be disrupted through the election.”
Improvements to election administration have been made over the last week, with NCSBE executive director Karen Brinson Bell noting that last week, 14 county offices in the area were unable to open, but now all offices are operational.
That being said, Bell noted that there are still significant challenges to administering an election in the region, and board member Stacy Eggers IV, a Republican and only member from western North Carolina, said that some areas received “20 inches of rain in less than about 36 hours” and that “we still have over 100,000 North Carolinians without power. Communication is significantly limited, and our roads remain in a crippled state.”
The resolution, passed by a unanimous vote of the board, allows for the 13 counties to alter early voting norms, such as locations and hours of operation, as well as move Election Day precincts to a different part of the county, or even outside the county, if infrastructure is inoperable in a normal voting location.
Jim Womack, president of the North Carolina Election Integrity Team, who has been very critical of the NCSBE’s Helene response, called the resolution “superb” in a statement to The Federalist, adding, “Couldn’t have written it better myself.”
Womack did, however, say that the resolution should have included a provision to allow out-of-state volunteers to add to displaced or otherwise incapacitated poll worker and poll observer staff.
The resolution allows for election officials and poll workers who registered voters in another North Carolina county to work precincts to make up for an anticipated shortage in the affected area.
The resolution also allows for absentee ballots to be delivered to Election Day polling places by 7:30 p.m. in a voter’s own county of registration, and it opens the ability of voters in the 13 counties to return their absentee ballots to any North Carolina county to have their ballots counted, as many voters in the area have been displaced.
“Precinct officials shall maintain a log of such ballots and chain-of-custody documentation, consistent with how early voting officials carry out this task, to be delivered to the county board office when supplies are returned on election night,” the resolution states.
As a result of election integrity concerns from board member Kevin Lewis, another Republican, during Monday’s meeting, each county board will also be required, on a weekly basis and on Election Day, to report out-of-county absentee ballots received. That provision temporarily adds to a portion of state law that already requires county boards to have a weekly assessment of absentee ballots.
“You don’t want to just get to the end of the election, and folks are blindsided with the number of ballots that have been returned,” Lewis said at the board meeting.
Normally, North Carolina law allows what are known as “Multipartisan Assistance Teams” to assist absentee ballot requests and returns at places like nursing homes and facilities that help voters with disabilities, and the resolution expanded the teams’ jurisdiction to disaster shelters and other relief areas.
Bell noted that the deadline to register to vote is still Oct. 11, and that early, in-person voting in all counties would start, as planned, on Oct. 17. During early voting, which ends Nov. 2 at 3:00 p.m., North Carolinians will also be able to partake in same-day registration to vote. She also said that the NCSBE may need to take more action in the future to respond to the needs of the western counties affected by Helene.
The NCSBE is a Democrat-run board in the state. The NCSBE and Gov. Roy Cooper, D-N.C. have been heavily criticized for their disaster response efforts, along with the Biden-Harris administration. Many have pointed out that the area most affected by Helene bolsters a narrow Republican vote majority in the state and that North Carolina is a key swing state in this year’s election.
Bell rejected the criticism (at least for the NCSBE) on a press call Monday.
“One of the things that has been said is that we are doing our actions in some sort of partisan manner. And I hope that it is very clear to everyone today that that state board acted in a nonpartisan manner,” she said. “I as executive director, act in a nonpartisan manner. And our commitment at this state board and in those county boards of elections is to ensure that every eligible voter is able to cast their ballot in this election, no matter what county they’re in.”
It’s clear, however, that high-level Democrats are aware of the power dynamic in the region. Former Obama advisor David Axelrod noted that while most Helene victims are likely Trump supporters, the major Democrat stronghold in the region, Buncombe County (Asheville), is made up of “upscale, kinda liberal voters, and they’re probably going to figure out a way to vote.”
“I’m not sure a bunch of these folks who had their homes and lives destroyed elsewhere, in western North Carolina, in the mountains there, are going to be as easy to wrangle for the Trump campaign,” he said.
Naturally, victims of natural disasters are not primarily worried about voting and are instead focused on family and basic survival necessities.
As The Federalist’s Tristan Justice wrote, “FEMA is typically proactive in disaster-response efforts, with pre-staged supplies set up where storms are estimated to hit, but such support was completely absent before the torrential downpours in Appalachia.” In response to the federal government’s woeful handling of the disaster, private citizens have launched their own efforts to aid the victims.
