Uncertainty Clouds North Carolina’s 2024 Election After Helene: Here’s What We Know

A man casts a vote during a special election in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District on in Charlotte, North Carolina, Sept. 10, 2019. Sean Rayford/Getty Images

Officials in North Carolina warned that voting in some parts of the battleground state might be impacted due to Hurricane Helene’s impacts.

During Helene, critical infrastructure in large swaths of western North Carolina and especially parts of the Appalachian Mountain areas were damaged or totally destroyed.

“There may be polling places impacted by mudslides, there may be polling places inaccessible because of damaged roads, and there may be polling places with trees that have fallen on them,” Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, told NPR on Tuesday.

How Many Voters Impacted?

According to the North Carolina elections board website, five county boards of elections were closed as of Thursday morning. That includes Avery, Buncombe, Mitchell, Watauga, and Yancey counties, it shows.

In Avery, Buncombe, and Watauga counties, elections staff are working or taking calls. The status of Mitchell and Yancey counties is not clear as the elections website lists them as “closed” with no other details.

The website also includes a breakdown by party among registered voters in the 25 counties designated as disaster zones. Some 480,000 voters are registered as Republican and 292,000 as Democratic.

Another 490,000 are unaffiliated with either major party, the elections website shows. Around 10,000 people are registered with third parties in the affected areas.

Key Dates

North Carolina’s voter registration deadline for the coming election is Oct. 11, or 25 days before the Nov. 4 election, although some voters can register in person at early voting sites during the early voting interval, lasting Oct. 17 to Nov. 2, according to the elections board website.

For mail-in voters, a county board of elections has to receive a completed voter registration application no later than 20 days before the general or primary election, the election board says. Meanwhile, the deadline to request an absentee ballot in the state is 5 p.m. ET on the Tuesday before Election Day, which falls on Oct. 29. The deadline to return a mail-in ballot is 7:30 p.m. ET on Election Day itself.

A tracking website provided by the University of Florida’s Election Lab shows that about 16,000 people have already cast early votes in the state. All of them are mail-in ballots.

Expected to Be Close

North Carolina is expected to be a key swing state in the 2024 election, coming four years after then-President Donald Trump, a Republican, narrowly defeated then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden by more than 70,000 votes, or 1.3 percent.

The Cook Political Report moved North Carolina to “toss-up” for the 2024 election between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in August. Recent polls in the state have shown the two candidates are neck-in-neck with one another, it noted.

Both Harris and Trump have made numerous stops to the Tar Heel State this year.

‘Daunting’ Level of Uncertainty

On Tuesday, Brinson Bell, the state election director, described the storm as causing a “daunting” level of uncertainty, with early in-person voting scheduled to start in just over two weeks on Oct. 17. Still, she said the state is prepared to help voters navigate the emergency.

“We’ve battled through hurricanes and tropical storms and still held safe and secure elections, and we will do everything in our power to do so again,” Brinson Bell told reporters. “Mountain people are strong, and the election people who serve them are resilient and tough, too.”

Federal Officials, National Guard Deployed

More than 6,700 Army and Air National Guard members have been deployed to areas that were hard-hit by Hurricane Helene last month, while a federal official confirmed that more than 5,000 federal employees are responding.

Some 6,700 guardsmen from 16 states were activated, with more than 1,100 members being sent to North Carolina, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) said in a statement.

Frank Matranga, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), told reporters earlier this week that federal agencies have sent 5,000 personnel to help with the response in the southern United States, including more than 1,500 FEMA staff members.

“I cannot thank enough all of the people across this country, across the federal family, across private and nonprofit sectors that are dedicating their time and energy to help the people in impacted areas and especially help the people of Western North Carolina,” Matranga said in a news conference. “We know it’s a big job and we know there’s still work to do, but we are making steady progress.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.