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North Carolina is used to hurricanes wreaking havoc before elections — usually at the coast.
But the mountain flooding from Hurricane Helene is on another level entirely.
Apart from the logistical questions of running the upcoming election, there are legitimate questions as to whether Helene could impact who wins the presidency.
In talking to Republicans last week, they are very concerned about Helene’s impact on turnout. Election Day is less than 30 days away. Early voting in North Carolina starts even sooner, on Oct. 17.
Let’s look at the numbers: 25 counties have been declared disaster areas, but many of those are on the fringe of the destruction.
Inside Politics instead looked at 15 counties that appear to have borne the brunt of the flooding: Avery, Buncombe, Burke, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Swain, Transylvania, Watauga and Yancey.
In the 2020 election, Joe Biden won two of them: Buncombe (Asheville) and Watauga (Appalachian State, Boone).
Donald Trump won everything else by large margins.
- Overall, Trump got a little more than 277,000 votes combined in those counties.
- Biden got 220,000.
- That adds up to a 57,000-vote advantage for Trump in a state he won by 73,000.
The N.C. Board of Elections said last week that it plans to start early, in-person voting in all 100 counties as scheduled, on Oct. 17. But the board said some early voting sites may not be usable because of washed-away roads and fallen trees. It may use trailers and tents instead.
There are also 37,000 mail ballots that were sent to the larger 25-county region that haven’t been returned. Some are presumably lost in the flood.
The state, however, said people can request a second mail ballot and the elections board will void the first one. You can also still vote in person even if you have requested a mail ballot.
Amanda Allen, the elections director in Jackson County, which is west of Asheville, said last week that she and her colleagues are fielding questions like: “I have requested an absentee ballot but my mailbox went down the river. Or I have been moved to a temporary shelter — where should I vote? Where can my ballot be delivered to?”
Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director for the N.C. Board of Elections, said she’s determined that voting will resemble a pre-Helene world, if that’s possible.
“I, or someone else, will go in that community and knock on doors if that’s what it takes,” she said.
But all of Brinson Bell’s determination may not make people want to vote.
Thousands will likely be displaced and living elsewhere. Will they go through the trouble of requesting a mail ballot? Will they know they can have that ballot sent to wherever they are living?
Some will still be at home, but focused on clean-up, insurance and putting life back together. Will they have the energy to look up a new address for a temporary polling place in a tent in a parking lot, and get there?
If turnout is down by 10% across the board, that probably costs Trump about 6,000 votes from his net margin. If it’s down 20%, the former president could lose 12,000.
If the election in North Carolina is a repeat of 2020, that's not enough to change who wins. But remember, Joe Biden won Georgia four years ago by less than 12,000 votes. He won Arizona by less than 11,000.
It’s also possible all counties aren’t impacted equally.
In the 2020 election, Biden received nearly 97,000 votes in Buncombe County — 44% of all the votes he received in the 15-county area. Presumably, Asheville will recover sooner than more rural counties just because it’s a city. Does that mean Democrats will lose a smaller share of their votes than Republicans?
The flip side is that UNC Asheville has canceled in-person classes until at least Oct. 28, and the city’s water system might take weeks to repair. Will the dispersed college students request mail ballots? Appalachian State in Boone has canceled classes until at least Oct. 15.
Brinson Bell said last week she’s considering what emergency measures to ask the state legislature to enact. One could be to reinstate the three-day grace period for mail ballots to arrive after Election Day. (They now must arrive by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day.)
Another request could be to allow voters to drop off mail ballots at Election Day polling places, which is currently not allowed.
Another possibility could be creating new early voting sites in the mountains that allow people in impacted counties to vote there, even if it’s outside of their home county. (When people vote early in person today, they must vote in their home county.)
There are other wildcards in 2024 that weren’t in the 2020 deck.
- A crippled Republican candidate for governor. Mark Robinson was already trailing Democrat Josh Stein by wide margins in the polls before CNN reported that Robinson called himself a “black NAZI” on a forum of a pornographic website more than a decade ago.
A recent Cook Political Report poll showed Robinson trailing Stein by a massive 24 percentage points.
Democrats are hoping Robinson is so toxic he keeps Republicans at home. But while the Robinson effect could hurt down-ballot candidates, there’s evidence that Republicans don’t see him as a reflection on Trump.
A Washington Post poll this week of North Carolina found that 84% of Republicans were “extremely motivated” to vote, compared with 78% of Democrats.
The bigger jeopardy is for GOP candidates listed on the ballot after governor.
- A second progressive party. Cornel West’s Justice for All Party will be on the ballot, along with Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.
Does West get, say, 10,000 votes statewide? Would those votes come from people who would have voted for Kamala Harris, or do they come from people who would have voted for Stein?
- Photo ID. The impact of the state’s photo ID requirement doesn’t appear to be significant.
In the March primary, 473 people had their ballots not counted because of photo ID. That number will likely be much higher because of the larger turnout in a presidential election, so presumably 1,500 or 2,000 or 2,500 people could have their ballots rejected because of the requirement.
But Democrats were only slightly more likely than Republicans to have their ballots rejected.
If, say, 2,500 voters overall had their ballots rejected, that might mean Democrats would only lose 200 or so votes more than Republicans.
