Election officials in southern states are grappling with fallout from dual hurricanes

CNN

By Curt Devine, Devan Cole and Janat Batra, CNN

(CNN) — Powerful hurricanes that wreaked havoc on wide swaths of the southeast have election officials facing the dim reality that some ballots may be lost in the mail.

While in many cases there are remedies to solve the problem, it’s part of the complicated preparations for the upcoming general election, especially in hard-hit North Carolina, a battleground state where communications and power remain spotty in some counties.

Hurricane Helene, which hit the US late last month, caused hundreds of deaths across half a dozen states and upended carefully laid election plans as polling centers were crippled and regular communication channels were shattered.

“I’ve got precincts that are completely gone, that are completely washed away,” said Mary Beth Tipton, the director of the board of elections in North Carolina’s Yancey County. “We’ve actually got a post office that’s washed away.”

Tipton said the county of about 18,000 people had mailed out hundreds of absentee ballots just before the flooding began and that it’s possible that some of them have been lost. Yancey County went for Trump in 2020 by a 2-1 margin.

County election officials in Florida, meanwhile, are facing a potential new challenge after Hurricane Milton made landfall on its western coast late Wednesday.

“I speak for my colleagues around the state: It’s a rather simple formula – it’s hunker down, survive, and then we have to assess where we are with damages and make it work,” Brian Corley, the supervisor of elections in Florida’s Pasco County, said on Wednesday, hours before Milton hit the state.

The disruptions in North Carolina and Florida prompted statewide officials to spring into action to respond to the new challenges, including by giving greater flexibility to election administrators who may need to make last-minute changes to their plans in the wake of the devastation.

Early voting begins Thursday in North Carolina

Multiple elections directors in North Carolina’s western region told CNN they continue to grapple with inconsistent cell-service and power as they seek to coordinate workers and update voters on plans for early voting that begins next week.

“Communications have been nonexistent around here,” said Robert Inman, the elections director for Haywood County, which has about 47,000 active voters and leans Republican.

Inman described the damage as “apocalyptic” in some parts of his county, where some roads, homes and other infrastructure were destroyed. Three prior polling places are no longer usable.

Such concerns were echoed by Cliff Marr, the elections director in North Carolina’s Polk County, which has roughly 17,000 active voters and is strongly Republican. Marr said his team’s cell phones keep cutting out and also said it’s unclear how many of the roughly 500 absentee ballots his county mailed out before the storm could have been lost.

“I don’t know where they were in the mail stream when everything fell apart,” Marr said. “It’s very difficult to ascertain what the status is of those out there, who got them and who didn’t.”

State officials have taken steps to help. North Carolina’s election board unanimously passed a resolution Monday to grant the counties most affected by Helene flexibility to change polling places, schedules and other aspects of voting. A bipartisan bill passed this week includes provisions for millions of dollars in elections assistance and some expansion in absentee and early voting methods for people in 25 counties.

While the state has not determined exactly how many absentee ballots may have been lost to the storm, officials have seen a normal pattern in the number of absentee ballots cast so far, the state elections board’s executive director, Karen Brinson Bell, said during a webinar Thursday. She added that voters with concerns can check the status of their absentee ballots online and request new ones if needed.

Bell also said that 75 early voting sites – only five fewer than originally planned – will be available next week in the broader region hit by the storm. She called that “absolutely outstanding” given Helene’s devastation.

Still, officials in damaged counties are racing the clock to prepare for Election Day.

In Buncombe County, home to left-leaning Asheville and the biggest county in western North Carolina, elections director Corinne Duncan said 600 people usually work the polls on Election Day but thus far only 200 have confirmed their availability.

The county had planned to offer 80 polling places that day, but not anymore. “We know that we are not going to be able to open all of those up,” said Duncan.

Despite fears that voter turnout could plummet in affected areas, officials in both red and blue districts expressed cautious hope that would not occur.

“We haven’t gone through anything like this so we don’t know, but we did go through Covid, and we saw record turnout,” Duncan said. “I am feeling very optimistic.”

Assessing damage in Florida

In hurricane-prone Florida, officials there told CNN this week that they are accustomed to planning for storms like Helene and Milton that have the potential to upset their preparations close to an election.

Helene, which brought flooding to the western part of the state, permanently shuttered some polling places in those areas. But the situation remains fluid in Florida as local election officials were scrambling to reassess the potential disruptions caused by Milton on their plans.

“We have 22 early voting locations that we will need to assess ahead of early voting, which is scheduled to start on Monday, October 21. Additionally, we will assess our more than 215 day-of voting locations,” said Christopher Heath, the elections supervisor administrator for Orange County, which leans blue.

Other county election offices in the state similarly said this week that that they would perform fresh assessments of their election infrastructure following Milton.

Any necessary adjustments will be possible thanks in part to an executive order issued by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis last week that eased restrictions around election administration changes for more than a dozen counties hit hard by Helene. Chief among those changes is allowing officials to move and consolidate polling places for early and Election Day voting even though state law requires such tweaks to be made well in advance of the election. Voters in those counties will be able to request mail-in ballots be sent to places other than their homes to accommodate voters who have evacuated the area.

Corley told CNN that his Pasco County, which has about 400,000 active voters, lost two Election Day polling centers because of Helene, but that they were able to “reallocate or redesignate” the voters impacted by those losses to other precincts. Pasco County has already received 15,000 mail ballots from voters.

Kari Ewalt, the administrative services director for Osceola County’s Supervisor of Elections, said that so far, her county is only contending with a backlog of unprocessed mail-in ballots because of the postal service disruptions caused by Milton this week.

“We have to adjust in-house what we’re going to do for that because we do need to process vote by mail ballots as they come in,” she said. “So we do anticipate having a very large workload come Monday for our vote-by-mail administration.”

Ewalt said that her office is in the process of checking out any potential damage to the 49 Election Day polling locations in the county and the nine early voting sites but that as of Friday afternoon, they’re not aware of any problem.

“We are very lucky. Not every county is as fortunate as we are,” she said.

South Carolina

Election supervisors in South Carolina that spoke to CNN consider themselves “fortunate” after facing one of the worst storms in the state’s history. Despite Helene leaving their counties without water, power and cell service for days, they still remain on track to open early polling locations later this month.

“We weren’t sure what to expect,” said Conway Belangia, director of elections and voter registration in Greenville County. “We’ve not had a hurricane-type situation in this neck of the woods like we just had, and I’ve been here 32 years. This is unprecedented.”

County election offices across the state were forced to close their doors the Wednesday afternoon before Helene made landfall, and they gradually reopened last week.

Belangia said that in a county of approximately 335,000 active voters, his office faced delays in mailing out absentee ballots due to Helene. About 5,400 ballots were sent out earlier this week instead of the intended date, October 4, making it too early to tell whether any displaced voters will have issues receiving their mail.

“Our biggest concern is people being able to get out and about [to the polls],” Belangia said. While Greenville County is continuing cleanup efforts in some areas, he said all of their early polling locations are in “good shape” and expected to open on time in two weeks.

Other election supervisors in similar designated disaster areas like Pickens County and Oconee County share Belangia’s sentiments. Despite some residents and business owners sustaining what Oconee County called “unprecedented damages,” the Oconee election team is optimistic that their community can come together to deliver their absentee ballots and support polling locations.

“We should have the most poll workers we’ve ever had here in Oconee County,” said Ryan Nowland, assistant director of Oconee County elections. “We’re really grateful that everyone’s coming out to help us get through this process.”

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