Will Hurricane Helene Tip The Vote In North Carolina?

Will Hurricane Helene tip the vote in North Carolina? Election officials in storm-ravaged counties must cope with damaged voting sites and Donald Trump’s calumnies Early voters mark their ballots in Greensboro, North Carolina. UndeterredPhotograph: Reuters Oct 24th 2024|ASHEVILLE Save Share Give Listen to this story. Around a map spread out on a table, Buncombe County election organisers survey the terrain like generals plotting an assault. “The bridge is out here, but there’s another road,” points out Corrine Duncan, the director of elections. They are trying to relocate polling places damaged by Hurricane Helene last month. A red arrow shows where an emergency tent in a café car park will house polling booths. There are nearly 1.3m registered voters in the 25 storm-ravaged counties adopting special voting rules following the disaster. Whether or not these voters turn out in large numbers may be a factor in the battle between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. In 2020, when Mr Trump won North Carolina and its 16 electoral-college votes by just over 1%, he won 23 of the 25 affected counties and outpolled Joe Biden there by more than 200,000 votes. Depressed turnout this autumn could hurt either candidate, but Mr Trump looks more vulnerable. He received 21% of his statewide vote in the region last time, compared with 13% for Mr Biden. Read more of our coverage of America’s presidential election Participation will also be an indicator of the recovery of towns staggered by the confirmed deaths of nearly 100 people, with more than 20 missing. Four weeks on, flooding has receded and trees and mudslides have been cleared from roads. Yet reliable access to drinking water may be months away, and in some areas the storm demolished roads and buildings. Democrats have largely paused campaigning, citing concerns about the well-being of residents and staff, in addition to damaged offices. Canvassing is resuming in areas with reliable water and electricity. “We have to face the fact that the election is going on, and this is the most important election of our lifetime,” says Sam Edney, the Democratic party chair in Transylvania County. North Carolinians years ago discarded election day and embraced election month. Nearly two-thirds of voters cast early in-person ballots in 2020. (The next-most-common method was by mail; only 16% turned out on election day.) Early voting began this year on October 17th. Administrators here are regularly putting in 16-hour days to open new polling sites and communicate with voters. Initial turnout was impressive. In McDowell County, on the first early-voting day, police were forced to direct traffic at the jammed car park near a polling site. “Nothing’s going to stop me from voting,” declared a 68-year-old in Asheville, wrapped in a warm jumper to wait in a long queue. Yet there were signs of reduced participation, overall. During the first two days, the early in-person vote in all the storm-hit counties was one percentage point lower than in 2020, compared with a higher turnout in other counties. In Buncombe County, which includes Asheville, the region’s largest city, a fifth of election-day precincts have been changed because they were damaged or are being used for emergency response. Administrators themselves have been displaced: the number of early-vote workers available has fallen by a third. With television still out and internet patchy, telling people about polling-place changes is “the single biggest challenge that we have today”, says Jake Quinn, chair of Buncombe’s Board of Elections. Rural McDowell County is posting letters to every voter; there are contingency plans for destroyed mailboxes. Mr Quinn acknowledges that meeting his original turnout target of 80% of registered voters will probably no longer be possible as people concentrate on rebuilding their lives. One 80-year-old in Asheville said she “never found it so hard to vote” as “everywhere seemed closed”. (Your correspondent met her at the election office, which straightened out most of her problems.) “What will be a big issue for us is the confusion,” says Mr Edney. Campaigns have had to reset too. Among other things, they are rolling out new messages and replacing innumerable water-sodden lawn signs. A recent canvass by the Harris campaign in the relatively unscathed town of Brevard found no one at home, since voters had evacuated after the storm. Without television, persuading occasional voters will be just as hard for the campaigns as it is for election officials trying to explain where to vote. Republican leaders say they are doing “anything that we can do”, as Michael Whatley, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, put it during a campaign stop. Yet he acknowledges that “it’s going to be hard” for some people affected by Helene “to focus on voting”. It is not unusual for victims of an unexpected disaster to lose faith in their government, even when it delivers speedy relief. “A lot of people are saying they haven’t seen FEMA,” says Chad Wolf, a former acting secretary of homeland security, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This, he reckons, could change some minds and energise voters. Mr Trump, as ever, goes much further. On October 21st the former president campaigned in Swannanoa, one of the worst-hit towns. Standing before a pile of debris, Mr Trump falsely claimed that FEMA had squandered disaster-relief funds on housing for illegal migrants. “A lot of the money is gone,” he declared. This calumny has emerged as a MAGA attack line. This and other misinformation is rife in the region. Voters in line in the town of Rutherfordton cited conspiracy theories about covered-up deaths in nearby Lake Lure and FEMA confiscating charitable donations. The atmosphere is redolent of 2020, when the covid-19 pandemic and the government’s response infuriated a polarised electorate. Rumours online hold that the new voting rules, passed unanimously in the state assembly, are designed to encourage election fraud. With a sigh, local officials express confidence in their procedures. Distributing ballots to precinct captains, a Buncombe County election worker detects “a pattern here–covid in 2020, now this”. She pauses. “Asteroid [in] 2028.” ■ Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important electoral stories, and Checks and Balance, a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters. Explore more The US elections of 2024 Donald Trump Kamala Harris United States