Voting can be difficult for students. It’s even harder after a hurricane. – Mother Jones

Asheville, North Carolina, in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Helene in late SeptemberMike Stewart/AP

Political science in August Professor Ashley Moraguez began the fall semester at the University of North Carolina Asheville with “big plans” to engage students in electoral politics. As director of UNC Asheville Votes, a nonpartisan student group, Moraguez planned for the fall to be theSemester of social studies”—including voter registration events, meet-and-greets with local candidates, and a “Party at the Polls” at Reed Plaza with food and live music.

For students there is an age group with historically low turnoutweren’t these efforts an abstract exercise: North Carolina is a crucial swing state that will likely be won by a razor-thin margin. Donald Trump won the state by less than 75,000 votes in 2020 and is now leading Kamala Harris past it about 1 percentage pointas shown by recent polls. In other words, every vote in North Carolina matters.

Hurricane Helene struck at the end of September. The storm has passed almost 14 inches of rain on Asheville, flooding roads and neighborhoods and causing deaths almost 100 people statewide. UNC Asheville, a campus of 2,900 studentslost electricity and running water. Students and teachers have moved. Classes have been canceled and will be held virtually for the remainder of the semester.

Now, after Helene, getting to the polls — or getting an absentee ballot — became even harder for students in western North Carolina.

This has made Moraguez’s work more challenging and also much more important. With campus closed, the university moved its early voting site from the student union to the edge of campus, in a health center. Moraguez and UNC Asheville The votes revolved around the bidding virtual sources-a website, Instagram pageand an email address where students can ask voting-related questions. “I’m really encouraged by how many students, in the midst of everything they’re dealing with, have reached out with questions so they can make sure their voice counts,” she says.

Still, she says, it’s difficult to know who, or how much, the group is reaching. Parts of western North Carolina still have no utilities, electricity or wifi. And many students understandably have more pressing problems than figuring out how to vote. “They lost their homes and their loved ones,” Moraguez said. “And now they’re just trying to figure out how to survive.”

As a political science professor and voting leader in Asheville, Moraguez is uniquely positioned to explain the challenges this important demographic group faces post-Helene. And she understands, at least in part, what they’re going through: When I spoke to her earlier this month, on the first day of early voting in North Carolina, she had no reliable internet or drinking water at her Asheville home and had spent the previous weeks “bouncing around” and staying with family in other parts of North Carolina and Georgia.

Here is an edited and condensed version of our conversation:

Now that the university is on pause and then switching to remote classes, there isIt’s almost an echo of what happened when Covid broke out. Has the pandemic prepared you for this? Does it feel familiar?

Yes and no. The 2020 election cycle required us to completely rethink how we modeled voter engagement on campus. Since 2020, I’ve learned a lot about how to engage people remotely.

Students taught me how to use social media more effectively. Through trial and error, we discovered how to better communicate complex election information via email. We had the website ready to use. We had the Instagram page ready to go. We didn’t have to start it all over again like we did in 2020. So in that regard, despite these really unfortunate and tragic situations, we were prepared to pivot our electoral engagement efforts much faster than in the past.

The problem is that I still don’t have reliable internet at home. I don’t have drinking water in the house. Can I teach online? Do I have to stay with family? My students are having problems with utilities and infrastructure. Those problems are more serious than I remember from 2020.

What do you mean when you say students helped you learn to navigate social media better?

When I was in college, Facebook was the social medium par excellence. I graduated from college in 2009. I wasn’t very familiar with Instagram Stories, and I don’t think I fully appreciated the extent to which young people get some of their information and news from social media.

Students have really taught me how to more effectively convey useful information on social media in a way that appeals to young people, and how to make things more aesthetically pleasing, making them more likely to grab attention. I don’t get my news primarily from social media, so having students lead this has been really helpful for me. I learned as much from them as they learned from me.

What are your biggest challenges in getting out the vote right now?

It’s hard to know who we’re reaching. I fear that in our campus outreach efforts (since they have all been online) we are missing some potential voters in western North Carolina who have been most affected by these storms.

Our State Board of Elections and our State Legislature have a series of emergency measures to help voters in western North Carolina have better access to the ballot box, but those changes are only effective to the extent voters are aware of them.

And there are people who have much more pressing problems on their plate right now than thinking about the elections. They have lost their homes and their loved ones, and now they are just trying to figure out how to survive. And you know, their voices matter, their voices matter. And I think right now we especially want to hear from people who are having these experiences but may not be getting the information they need or may not have the opportunity to vote right now.

I was in college during the 2016 election. I requested an absentee ballot in Florida, where I grew up and where I hoped to vote. It never came. And I never listened to it and never voted. Is there a concern that these may end up being teenagers or young adults in their early twenties and that weDo you ask a lot of them to stay informed about voting?

It is undoubtedly true that young people – which I broadly define as ages 18 to 25 – have lower voter turnout than other demographic groups. But I think there are a few reasons why that is the case and why it’s unfair to compare young voters to older groups.

Political science research shows that voting is a habit. It’s a habit you develop over time, and once you adopt that habit, you will almost certainly remain a reliable voter for the rest of your life. And then how can we expect new voters to have these habits if they are not legally allowed to engage in those habits?

There’s also a narrative that young people are very apathetic and don’t care about problems, and that’s just not what I observe when I work with young people inside or outside the classroom. Instead, I see it more as a matter of access. It’s just hard to get involved. There are a lot of rules, deadlines and barriers no matter where you live. There are only large start-up costs associated with participating. And so if there’s no one there to help you do that, it can be very daunting to vote or otherwise get involved in politics because you just don’t know where to start.

Will students studying at UNC Asheville from abroad be able to access absentee ballots sent from their home state?

It is overwhelming that our students are North Carolina residents. I think about this year 13 percent of our student population is an out-of-state resident of the US. That would amount to approximately 300 to 400 students. Of those students, it is difficult to know how many of them would have been registered in North Carolina than in their home state.

For those students who were on campus and requested an absentee ballot before the storm hit, it is possible that (they) had to evacuate before receiving their ballot. It’s hard to know how many students this will affect, but it’s almost certain that some voters will be affected.

The advice we have given these voters is to contact their local or state elections office as soon as possible and request a reissuance of their ballot.

Historically, after major hurricanes you often see one drop in mood. Does disaster-related voter suppression come up at all in your classes?

I teach courses on American elections. We talk about barriers to voting, not just about devices or laws that can make it easier or harder for people to vote, but also about socioeconomic factors that can make it harder for some groups of people to vote than others. I’ve never talked to my students specifically about how natural disasters and recovery efforts can impact dynamics, but I can bet they will once our classes get back in session.