One week after Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida and began its devastating rampage throughout the southeastern United States, the death toll reached over 200 on Thursday, with hundreds still missing.
Helene is the deadliest hurricane to strike the U.S. mainland since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and has displaced hundreds of residents and wiped out entire communities who are still without vital resources, including medicine, electricity, food and water.
Helene’s extensive fallout “continues to pose a political and humanitarian test for the (Biden) administration,” per AP. With Election Day looming, voting processes may be significantly disrupted in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida — key battleground states that could determine control of the White House and the Senate.
How could Hurricane Helene disrupt voting?
For some states in the Southeast, in-person and mail-in voting will likely be logistically scrambled by Helene’s impact. In North Carolina, where over half of Helene’s victims were, early voting is set to proceed on Oct. 17, according to reporting from The Guardian, but sticking to that schedule could be an uphill battle:
- North Carolina counties are required to provide their citizens with a minimum of 13 days of in-person early voting, but under the current circumstances, some areas may not meet that requirement.
- As of Thursday, five county elections offices in the state remain closed.
- It is currently unknown whether or not any ballots or crucial voting equipment were damaged or destroyed by the hurricane, or if early voting sites will even be physically accessible, according to Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of North Carolina’s election board.
- The state is facing delays in mailing out voters’ ballots due to the United States Postal Service having to stop delivering mail to homes and businesses in the Western region of North Carolina, for the time being. On top of that, voters will also have a further-limited amount of time for their mail-in ballots to be counted this year. “Last year, the state’s Republican-led general assembly eliminated a three-day grace period for mail-in ballots to arrive after election day,” per The Guardian.
Biden, Harris and Trump visit Helene’s hard-hit areas
On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris visited Augusta, Georgia, to witness the aftermath of Helene’s destruction in the Peach State, where she handed out meals and met with local officials. The Democratic presidential nominee spoke in front of a home damaged by fallen trees, where she “announced that the federal government would cover 100 percent of the costs of debris removal and other emergency protective measures for three months to help the state recover,” The New York Times reported.
“The president and I have been paying close attention from the beginning to what we need to do to make sure the federal resources hit the ground as quickly as possible,” Harris said. “That work has been happening.”
Also on Wednesday, President Joe Biden surveyed the Carolinas via helicopter, where many roads are still inaccessible, and the president is expected to return to the region to visit Florida and Georgia on Thursday, according to The Associated Press.
Earlier this week, former President Donald Trump visited Valdosta, Georgia, where his campaign partnered with Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian humanitarian charity, to provide supplies to residents affected by Helene, ABC News reported. Trump criticized the Biden administration for its response to the disaster in his remarks.