Voter turnout is rising in key swing states hit by Hurricane Helene

It’s been just over a month since Hurricane Helene tore through the southeastern United States hundreds of lives and causes an estimated $53 billion dollars in damages. Besides that it is a record storm in itselfHelene was also the first hurricane in U.S. history to hit two battleground states within weeks of a major election.

In North Carolina, one of the seven swing states likely to determine the outcome of this week’s presidential race, Helene’s destruction has displaced thousands of people, caused hundreds of road closures and disrupted mail services just weeks before the state’s early elections started. There were more than twenty post offices email still forwarded from October 22.

The North Carolina Board of Elections took swift action to ensure that people affected by the storm retain their right to vote, approving a resolution to, among other things, extend early voting deadlines and relax some restrictions around absentee ballots in the 13 western counties hardest hit by Helene. Despite these measures, a question still loomed: would the storm dampen election turnout?

Now that early voting is over, data released by local officials in Helene’s path shows Voters’ enthusiasm has not diminished. Indeed, a reverse trend is underway. North Carolina and Georgia, the other state affected by Helene, have reported this record-breaking early voting numbers: The voter turnout has been 2012 and 2016 surpassedand, in North Carolina, 2020 – an election year in which many people voted early to avoid crowds.

The North Carolina Board of Elections announced that this was the case As of Friday, November 1 at 2 p.m., four million ballots have been cast across the stateabout 51 percent of North Carolina’s total registered voters and the state’s largest early voting year ever.

“It appears that even the western North Carolina counties hardest hit by Hurricane Helene do not have massively lower voter turnout rates,” said Jowei Chen, an associate professor of political science at the University of Michigan who studies redistricting and political geography. “It is possible that the conveniences of voting by mail and early voting may have mitigated the potentially negative effects of the hurricane on voters.”

Chen noted that while displaced voters can request a mail-in ballot to be sent to their new, temporary residence, 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 efforts of the Republican Party. embracing early voting this cycle. But election officials’ response to Hurricane Helene has also opened new avenues for affected and displaced voters to participate. Disaster researchers say the federal and state disaster response process itself likely influences how voters come out to vote and who they vote for.

In Avery County, North Carolina, the storm-damaged Roaring Creek, Ingalls and Plumtree voting locations were combined into Riverside Elementary School. On Thursday, poll workers were eating lunch in the middle of the day while teachers went in and out of school to pick up supplies to deliver to high-need areas in the province. Although the day went slowly, workers said they had already seen between 600 and 700 people cast ballots that week — larger, they said, than in previous years.

A county away, in hard-hit Spruce Pine, the largest city in heavily Republican Mitchell County, about a dozen early voters showed up at the volunteer fire department to cast their ballots over the course of an hour. The site, located in the center and surrounded by wide, well-paved roads and parking spaces, remains easily accessible. One voter, who gave her name as Lauren, said it was easier to vote early than wait for Election Day because she owned a campground that was affected by the flooding and had to do cleanup.

Previous research has shown that a hurricane can both suppress and encourage voters. An otherwise politically committed person whose home has been destroyed by a major disaster might prefer to cast a ballot and prioritize something more pressing, such as rebuilding his or her home.

On the other hand, voters who received federal aid or some other form of kickback after a storm may be more likely to vote, and some studies show that vote for the incumbent party (the party responsible for delivering that bribe). Research also shows that people did not people who receive sufficient help from the government are also inclined to vote, but for the challenging party.

James Robinson, a welder who cast his vote Thursday at the Spruce Pine polling place, said he was a Trump voter before the hurricane and would be one afterward. Robinson suffered house damage at the hands of 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, citing what he said was a slow response as he and his neighbors cut themselves outside their own driveway.

Thirty miles away, in Madison County, an area with a predominantly Republican population 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 a decade. Her home was not severely damaged by Helene, but many of her neighbors’ homes and businesses and her city’s infrastructure were destroyed. “You go a few miles in the other direction and it’s just horrible,” 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 fired, she came home to find that she had not received her voter registration card in the mail, but her husband had. Over the course of the past year, North Carolina has removed nearly 750,000 registrants in an effort to remove duplicates, deceased, and other ineligible voters from the electoral rolls. Francine wondered if she had accidentally been included among them. But she wasn’t well enough yet to drive to the elections office to find out. On the day she had to have her stitches removed, Hurricane Helene hit. Francine’s husband removed the stitches himself as the storm raged around them.

Two weeks ago, Francine was finally able to drive to her local election office and prove to the officer that an error on her recently renewed driver’s license had resulted in her registration being wrongly expunged by the state. She cast her vote for Kamala Harris early last week and was surprised at how many people she saw voting early as well.

Francine’s main issues are women’s rights, separation of church and state, and US involvement in conflicts abroad. She wasn’t happy with either candidate, but she said she couldn’t bear to vote for Trump. The former president’s response to the hurricane, pouring gasoline on the fire false rumors and conspiracy theories that emerged after the storm only further soured her on his candidacy. “Everyone is pointing fingers at each other and it’s getting really ugly,” she said. “Everyone is so excited that I think the turnout will be great.”

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