Election officers in Georgia and North Carolina stated Monday that voting from their states within the presidential election in November won’t be derailed by the injury left by Hurricane Helene whilst crews proceed to seek for victims.
Although components of the 2 states have been devastated by the hurricane, election officers stated they’re engaged on plans to guarantee that each poll solid for the Nov. 5 election shall be counted.
“What has been on everybody’s thoughts is what’s going to occur to elections,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger stated at a information convention Monday. “Excellent news: Absentee ballots are going out this week as scheduled, and early voting will begin subsequent Tuesday, on Oct. 15.”
The streets are flooded close to Peachtree Creek after hurricane Helene introduced in heavy rains over night time, Sept. 27, 2024, in Atlanta.
Megan Varner/Getty Pictures
Raffensperger stated that whereas Helene brought on widespread injury and energy outages in his state, he doesn’t anticipate there to be any main disruptions to the final election. He stated election places of work and voting tools within the state’s 159 counties escaped severe injury.
Blake Evans, elections director for the Georgia secretary of state’s workplace, stated county officers are assessing about 2,400 polling areas. To date, simply three should be modified due to storm injury, he added.
In North Carolina, the state’s Board of Elections unanimously accepted on Monday a measure that will broaden the authority of native election officers within the counties most impacted by the catastrophe.
Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, attends The Rules First 2024 Summit: Conserving America’s Liberal Custom, on the in Washington, D.C., Feb. 24, 2024.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Name by way of Getty Pictures
The accepted measure will enable election officers in 13 of the hardest-hit North Carolina counties to make adjustments to voting websites, entry emergency provides and deploy groups to help with absentee voting at catastrophe shelters forward of early voting commencing on Oct. 17.
“We’re dedicated to making sure that we open early voting on the seventeenth in all 100 counties, together with these affected counties. It might look slightly totally different in these affected counties, however we absolutely intend to supply early voting beginning on the seventeenth,” stated Karen Brinson Bell, government director of the North Carolina Board of Elections.
As of Monday, each county election workplace in North Carolina was opened, based on Bell, in comparison with final week when 14 of these places of work have been closed as a result of storm. Bell thanked native election officers all through the state for working to get their places of work on-line whereas going through “private struggles” together with injury to their houses, transportation points and a scarcity of fundamental utilities.
“What a distinction per week makes … that is simply fairly the feat,” Bell stated. “Our struggles aren’t over, and that’s the reason we want the Board to take motion to present the pliability essential to hold out these elections, and to be of one of the best service to the voters that we could be.”
She informed reporters Monday that authorities may usher in Nationwide Guard tents or FEMA trailers to behave as polling areas, and she or he insisted that it may be achieved securely and safely.
“It’s not as spacious as your regular polling location, but it surely does present the area essential on the present voting web site if the car parking zone [of a polling site is] nonetheless accessible,” she stated. “[And] even in a short lived construction we are able to nonetheless preserve safety of the voting tools and security of our employees.”
An aerial view of flood injury alongside the French Broad River within the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Oct. 2, 2024, in Asheville, N.C.
Mario Tama/Getty Pictures
In Yancey County, North Carolina, Board of Elections Director Mary Beth Tipton informed ABC Information that officers are nonetheless assessing how most of the county’s 11 polling websites can be operational by Election Day. Many of the different polling websites are in faculties and hearth stations, that are presently getting used as shelters and emergency reduction websites, and two election stations have been severely broken by flood waters.
“There are a few of them that don’t even exist anymore,” Tipton stated.
One of many hardest-hit counties was Buncombe County, which sustained historic flooding. The county consists of Asheville, the eleventh-largest metropolis within the state.
As of Monday, 67,000 utility prospects remained with out electrical energy and a big a part of Buncombe County was with out working water on account of main injury to the water system and its water therapy plant, officers stated. Restoration crews continued to go looking large piles of particles for 60 individuals who stay unaccounted for, officers stated.
“I am right here to reassure our neighborhood that Buncombe County will vote,” Corinne Duncan, the director of Buncombe County Election Providers, stated at a information convention Monday.
Duncan stated she was involved that some polling locations must be modified as a result of lack of water or energy. She stated many of the election places of work and voting tools have been spared by the storm, however officers are working to “strategize and modify plans” to verify anybody who needs to vote can accomplish that.
She stated officers are attempting to get in contact with polling employees for coaching to verify polling stations are staffed. As of now, early voting will start as deliberate in Buncombe County and residents nonetheless have till Oct. 11 to register to vote, Duncan stated.
“We’re assessing what voting areas can be found,” stated Duncan, including, “We should respect the gravity of our state of affairs.”
