Today’s podcast delves into the key themes of the 2024 election through the lens of seven battleground states. We’ve heard from voters in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Wisconsin so far; This week we turn to North Carolina, where last month’s storm devastated the state — and some of its election infrastructure.
North Carolina officials are preparing for an election like no other in the wake of Hurricane Helen. The storm scrambled North Carolina’s voting infrastructure — sweeping away absentee ballots, disrupting mail service, and destroying polling sites — and could impact what Election Day will look like in two weeks.
The state is expected to be close — former President Donald Trump won by just 1.3 percentage points in 2020, and current poll averages point to a tighter race this year — and all eyes are on the mountains, which took the brunt of the hurricane’s impact.
While some parts of life are returning to normal after Hurricane Helen struck last month — power is back, internet service is back — many people in the state’s west are still without potable water in their homes.
With so many people displaced or undergoing reforms, experts have raised concerns about low voter turnout.
“The question would be: If you have to avoid swallowing water in the shower, how important is voting to you?” Steve Harrison, a political reporter at NPR affiliate WFAE, told Today host Sean Rameswaram explained.
In an effort to ensure the election runs as close to normal as possible, local election officials were allowed to move polling locations and adjust operating hours. The state also updated the rules for absentee voters, allowing them to return their completed ballots to counties other than their home county, as previously required, though the state stopped short of reintroducing a three-day grace period for ballots to be recounted.
Even with the added flexibility, actually communicating the changes to voters in affected areas remains a challenge. “It’s hard to get information, because the internet is down, the cell service is down, and everything changes on a daily basis,” said Kaitlyn Leaf, a Buncombe County resident. “Sometimes hour by hour.” (Liv is married to a Vox Media employee, audio engineer Patrick Boyd.)
So far, officials’ efforts to create more flexibility for voters appear to be paying off: The state set a record turnout on the first day of early voting, which began in all 100 counties on Oct. 17, though it’s unclear how many of those votes were. They were dumped in affected areas.
These voters could have a significant impact on the outcome of a national election, according to Harrison’s analysis. Of the 15 counties most affected by Hurricane Helen, Biden won only two in 2020: Buncombe, home to the liberal city of Asheville, and Watauga, where Appalachian State University is located. The rest? Trump won by a wide margin.
Polling averages show that the 2024 presidential race in North Carolina is hot, meaning any drop in turnout in those counties could ultimately hurt the former president’s chances.
“If it’s incredibly close, I don’t think we’ll hear the last of Helen,” Harrison told Today.
Briefly explain Election Day concerns in other contested states
North Carolina isn’t the only state that could face Election Day hurdles, though the impact of Hurricane Helen makes its situation unique. Extremely thin margins and wrinkles in vote-counting rules in other closely contested states could delay full election results until after November 5.
With polls showing several battleground states to be a close battle between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, election officials are warning that they may need to count a larger share of ballots before media organizations can reliably present their projections, triggering a similar process. It takes several days. To 2020.
Many states are also dealing with last-minute attempts to purge voter rolls and change election rules. But at least two states are likely to see delays because their electoral rules remain the same.
In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, election officials are prohibited from processing mail-in ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day. In other states with mail-in ballots, workers may prepare ballots for counting early — verifying signatures, flattening ballots — in order to streamline the vote-counting process on Election Day. A late start by election workers in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania could delay calls this year, especially if the race is down by just a few thousand votes.
Both state legislatures considered updating their rules after the 2020 election, but conspiracy theories and partisan gridlock ultimately killed bills that would have done so.
“It’s a real frustration,” Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt told CNN in September. “[The proposed legislation] It is of no use to any candidate. Neither party benefits from it. It only benefits the public to know the results early and our election officials, who won’t have to work day and night.
As we saw in 2020, any delay between Election Day and the final results leaves plenty of room for conspiracy theories to take hold — something Trump is likely to take full advantage of. In 2020, Trump posted about “surprise ballots” in Milwaukee after a jump in Biden votes when the city reported all absentee ballots at the same time. (He still falsely claims he won Wisconsin in 2020.)
CNN political correspondent Sarah Murray says voters should ignore conspiracy theories in case they wait longer for results in 2024. This does not mean that people throw away ballots. It just means that election workers are still counting votes.
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Swati sharma
Fox Editor-in-Chief
