Hurricane’s aftermath alters election efforts

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 22nd of October.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST:And I’m Nick Eicher.

First up: Elections in the wake of natural disasters.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton damaged voting precincts and made some roads leading to them impassable.

That forced some election officials to make new plans, and to work double-time to make sure voters know about them.

REICHARD: WORLD’s Mary Muncy has the story of one community trying to organize a smooth election.

BRUCE O’CONNELL: I'm presently running for county commission in Buncombe County.

MARY MUNCY: Bruce O’Connell runs an inn just outside of Asheville, North Carolina.

O’CONNELL: The business was shut down a month early. Our busiest month, of course, is October, and to lose that is about 20 to 25 percent of the revenue of the entire season.

The hurricane didn’t damage O’Connell’s property, but he was without power until last week, and still doesn’t have potable water.

His district in Buncombe County is in the middle of some of the worst-hit areas in the state.

O’CONNELL: Swannanoa was all but wiped out. Up in Barnardsville, I'd say all but wiped out. I mean, it was the worst I've ever imagined.

O’Connell says everyone has suffered, and it’s totally upended election crunch time.

O’CONNELL: We had this event, that event, we had debates, we had forums, we had people wanted to meet me. Everything got canceled.

He says things are slowly returning to normal, but the hurricane changed people’s priorities as many people are still worried about basic survival not politics.

O’CONNELL: I've toned it way down. I'm not going to insult people right now by talking about politics when they're just trying to get a glass of water and be able to flush their toilet.

O’Connell has recorded a few radio ads and blanketed his district in yard signs… but he’s not scheduling any events. Besides, he has to worry about shutting down and winterizing his inn.

Elysha Theis lives just outside of Asheville. she’s one of those voters whose priorities have changed.

ELYSHA THEIS: The hurricane does make me kind of little bit more weary about voting.

She works remotely, and had to take about two weeks off while she waited for the power to come back on. Now she’s not sure if she wants to take more time off to vote.

THEIS: I've been on the fence about voting. So there's part of me that's just like voting is nine to five. I wish it was a little bit later, right?

Theis says her brain has been in “hurricane-recovery mode” for the last few weeks and she hasn’t been thinking about the election as much as she normally would have.

THEIS: I'm sure, like, if the hurricane didn't happen, my social media content would be more related to voting and where to vote and who to vote and whatnot, but right now, the content I'm seeing is still primarily on hurricane relief efforts.

After the storm, North Carolina’s State Election Board issued an emergency notice, allowing counties affected by the hurricane to change their plans as needed.

Most of the changes in Buncombe County came in the form of finding new polling locations. Some of the usual spots are damaged, others are inaccessible, and some have been turned into relief hubs.

The county has also had to change the hours for early voting. Normally they’d be open until 7:30, but they shortened it to 5:00 and opened up on the weekends. that way the poll workers don’t have to drive in the dark.

The county has most of the changes planned. Now, the challenge is trying to get the word of the changes out to voters.

CORRINNE DUNCAN: We're lucky that we have a good media outlet here in in western North Carolina. So we're leaning heavily on that.

Corrinne Duncan is the director of elections for Buncombe County. She says they’ve had to work harder this year to get the message out.

DUNCAN: We're doing all of the normal things, posting on our website, doing social media, doing press releases, but we're also putting it on the radio. The radio ended up being a very good means of communication during this event.

The main thing they’re relying on is word of mouth—especially in areas where polling locations have changed.

But that only helps people still in the state:

DUNCAN: We did have to ramp up our operations, because we have an increase in absentee requests, as you might expect, from people evacuating the area.

The county had already sent out a round of mail-in ballots before the hurricane hit, and it had to change its process slightly for the second round afterward.

DUNCAN: Our vendor for where we normally get the the ballots metered, they were flooded. So the me and another staff member sat on the floor of the post office and put stamps on ballots and made it happen.

Duncan hasn’t heard of many people who lost their absentee ballots in the flood, but they’re able to replace them if someone did.

DUNCAN: We have received some ballots that have, like, little smudges of mud on them, and that's okay. We're able to process them as long as we can tell what your intention to vote was.

Most North Carolina voters I talked to had a plan to vote, even if they hadn’t been thinking about it as much as the last cycle.

And communication efforts are working. Theis heard about early voting sites from party offices and it’s helping her formulate her own plan.

THEIS: They do a wonderful job, I gotta say, like, I mean the amount of information I get from them about early voting. So, yeah, right, I'm like, ‘Oh, well, maybe I could just early vote.’ You know?

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

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