A dozen county election offices in North Carolina are still closed on Tuesday as western North Carolina digs itself out of the unprecedented damage left behind by Hurricane Helene.
State Board of Elections (SBE) personnel are working to ensure the security of the elections offices and the ballots, voting machines and other sensitive materials in them.
“In terms of what we know about our election offices is that they did not sustain damage through the storm,” North Carolina Elections Director Karen Brinson Bell said during an online meeting with reporters on Tuesday. “So our essential materials — like ballots, like the voting equipment — are unharmed. That means everything has remained in place in terms of security and chain of custody for those materials.”
They also are working with state and federal officials to gauge recovery operations and ensure that state residents affected by the storm will have the opportunity to vote either by mail ballot or in person on Election Day, Brinson Bell said.
“As of this morning, 12 of our county election offices in western North Carolina remain closed,” Brinson Bell told reporters during an online call Tuesday morning. “We are focused now on getting those offices back up and running so that absentee ballot requests can be processed and voter registrations can be entered into the system.”
More than 400 roads in western North Carolina, including major interstate highways, remain closed because of downed trees, mudslides and washouts, according to the North Carolina Department of Transportation. That is making mail delivery difficult and barring access to some of the closed election offices.
The SBE is sending special emergency kits called “attack response kits,” designed for securing elections in the event of cyberattacks, to county offices in hard-hit areas, Brinson Bell said. Those kits serve as “elections offices in a box,” she said, that will allow the three or four counties that need them to operate critical electoral functions while phone service and internet access is being restored.
Early voting is well underway, and North Carolina is shaping up to be a major battleground state in the 2024 Presidential Election. State officials are keenly aware that all eyes will be on the count here on and after Election Day.
Brinson Bell said that although the level of devastation wrought by Helene is unprecedented, the SBE has well-established disaster response procedures in place to ensure it conducts a free, fair, secure and safe election as cleanup and recovery efforts continue. The Board already has had to head off and address threats to the elections process in what is shaping up to be an election marked by unprecedented partisan tension.
“I hope that this helps them have more faith in the results and in what we do. Elections people are resilient, just like the people that live in the mountains,” she said.
“Because of those preparations that we have been doing for months — and really years because of what it takes to pull off a Presidential Election — it means that we have processes and procedures in place to be responsive to these circumstances. It means that other counties can be of assistance. It means the State Board can be of assistance because we have our processes in place. We prepare for emergencies and things to not go as planned, and so that’s what we’re doing. We’re responding to the situation at hand. We will still carry out voting.”
As county offices get back up and running, they will begin to assess early voting sites and Election Day polling places to see the extent of the damage and which facilities won’t be available on Nov. 5.
“Once we know this information, we can better determine a path forward on how to provide in-person voting,” Brinson Bell said.
“We have been, and continue to be, in regular contact with our state and federal partners, as well as the U.S. Postal Service to monitor where we are with road accessibility and mail delivery,” she added. “We understand that some roads are starting to get back open, which, of course, is a positive sign. We are also in contact with our voting systems and ballot printing vendors, and they stand ready to assist as needed, if there are any issues that arise that they can be of help with.”
Displaced absentee voters who have not received ballots can request an absentee ballot to be delivered to their new location. If the person has already requested an absentee ballot, they can change where it’s going to be sent by contacting their county Board of Elections and asking them to “spoil” their current ballot — which means deleting it so it will not be counted — and reissuing a ballot to a new location.
On Monday, the SBE took the first of what Brinson Bell said are likely to be many actions in response to this storm by permitting county boards that are affected to delay holding their absentee board meetings, which are scheduled to start today at 5 p.m. and by statute are held every Tuesday until Election Day. Now, those affected counties can delay those meetings until they are set up and operational.
More emergency action by the Board or the Legislature is expected, including the possibility of extending the deadline for counting absentee ballots beyond Election Day, Brinson Bell said.
“We are working with the counties that are affected to determine what will be most beneficial, be it through the orders of the State Board, or through it by making legislative asks,” Brinson Bell said, “since we know the Legislature’s coming back, I think, with regards to whether we move forward with extending the receipt of absentee ballots.”
