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North Carolina is on knife's edge and is a must-win state for Donald Trump. If Kamala Harris wins the Tarheel State and also Nevada, she can lose Pennsylvania and still get to 270. So what happens there is of great consequence.
Unfortunately, Hurricane Helene just gummed up the works, literally. Roads that voters need to get to their polling places have been destroyed. Mail service for absentee ballots has stopped. Communications are iffy. People who have lost their houses, livelihoods, relatives, and pets and who have no place to go have probably not put voting on the top of their to-do lists. They have much bigger problems on their minds. But the election is not going to be postponed. Now what?
State election officials have said that there is good news and bad news. The good news is that no printed ballots or voting machines have been damaged. The bad news is that many polling locations have been flooded and will not be usable on Nov. 5—assuming anyone can even get there. In addition, many people in the flooded areas have left the state (temporarily) and may not know how to vote, even if voting made it onto their to-do lists.
Which party will the hurricane hit the hardest? That is hard to say. In 2020, Trump won the 25 western counties that have been declared disaster areas, with 62% of the vote. A million people in those counties voted in 2020. On the other hand, the hardest hit part of the 25 counties is Asheville, an artsy-craftsy hippie town that is the county seat of Buncombe County (pop. 270,000), which Biden won with 60% of the votes. Will the devastation in Buncombe County cost Kamala Harris more votes that the not-nearly-as-bad flooding in the other 24 western counties? We don't know.
North Carolina law allows anyone to ask for an absentee ballot to be sent to a temporary address. However, with so many roads and bridges washed out, the USPS may not be able to deliver the ballots or get them back in time. Overseas ballots were mailed out on Sept. 20 and domestic ones went out on Sept. 25. Many were probably in transit when the storm hit and were destroyed. Postal service has been suspended to Zip codes that house 1.3 million North Carolinians. The USPS has said it will restore service as soon as conditions allow it to, but fixing hundreds of roads is not going to happen in the next 5 weeks.
Officials have stated that voters who requested an absentee ballot and didn't get one are allowed to ask for a new one. As long as they don't try to vote twice, there is no problem. Also, people who requested an absentee ballot and didn't get one may simply vote in person—if they can get to a polling place.
Election headquarters in 12 counties have been closed due to adverse conditions. In addition, many people who signed up to be poll workers may not be able to do it, requiring counties to find and train new ones on short notice.
The Republican-controlled state legislature should give the clairvoyants they employ a bonus. They saw this coming, told the legislators, and they acted accordingly. A recent change to the election laws requires absentee ballots to arrive by Election Day, thus eliminating the previous 3-day grace period in the old law, which allowed the counting of absentee ballots that arrive up to 3 days after the election. Also, the legislature changed the law, making it more difficult for election officials to swap one polling place for another—for example, in the event of a disaster.
The director of the state Board of Elections, Karen Bell, is considering asking the legislature to reinstate the grace period and also authorize transmission of ballots electronically. The latter is not totally off the wall. Overseas and military voters are already allowed to submit ballots electronically, so election offices are already set up to handle electronic votes. Whether the legislature agrees to electronic submission depends on the legislators' estimate of which party is hurt more by the chaos. If they feel it will hurt the Republicans more, you will see lightning-fast action to make voting easier.
Another huge challenge will be voter education. Allowing people to request a new absentee ballot or allowing them to e-mail their vote in won't help if the voters don't know about it. But how can they be informed when power is out and cell phone service is out? Not everyone has a battery-powered portable radio.
North Carolina law requires voters to present ID when voting or include a photocopy of it when voting by mail. But North Carolina law makes an exception for voters whose ID was destroyed by a natural disaster. But how many voters know this?
Another factor that is in the mix is that all voters are equal but some voters are more equal. Affluent college-educated voters who managed to flee to a safe location that has power and Internet may be better prepared to look up how to vote and be able to carry out the instructions than people struggling to survive in an isolated flooded area. They may also be more aware of how close North Carolina is and how every vote counts. In short, the political effect of the storm could be huge, but at this point it is unknowable. (V)