North Carolina residents will see changes to early voting after Hurricane Helene

North Carolina election officials are adjusting their voting rules to ensure residents in areas impacted by the recent hurricane damage can vote early in the upcoming election.

Hurricane Helene made a damaging sweep across the southeast, covering swing states that had already started early voting.

But the storm caused severe damage to several predominantly red counties and early voting centers as focus shifted to disaster relief.

On Monday, the North Carolina Elections Board passed a bipartisan emergency resolution that reformed the state’s early voting process in 13 counties. Notably, all except one, Buncombe, voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020.

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Workers, community members, and business owners clean up debris in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Marshall, North Carolina on Monday, Sept. 30, 2024. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The adjustments include changing or adding voting sites and maintaining their availability, extending the hours when a voting site is open, and adding or reducing days that any site is open within the early voting period, according to the election board.

Voters in these counties will also have more time to request an absentee ballot, with the deadline being Nov. 4. 

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The state’s elections board identified 13 counties in western North Carolina as the most impacted by the hurricane.

The counties that will see the changes applied to their early voting processes include: Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Transylvania, Watauga, and Yancey.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks outside the Chez What furniture store as he visits Valdosta, Ga., a town impacted by Hurricane Helene, Monday, Sept. 30, 2024.  (Evan Vucci)

Voters in these counties will now have the option of turning in absentee ballots to another county’s election board, rather than following previous protocol that mandated they only submit their ballots to their local counties. 

Trump narrowly won North Carolina in 2020 by roughly 1.4 percentage points, and early voting has since been made a focus of Republican ground game efforts this cycle, the state’s GOP told Fox News Digital in a recent interview. 

The former president, however, told Fox News that he believes despite the storm’s impact, voters will still turn out for the election.

“I believe they’re going to go out and vote if they have to crawl to a voting booth,” Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham in an interview that aired Monday. “And that’s what’s happening.”

Swannanoa residents walk through devastating flood damage from the Swannanoa River in western North Carolina on Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024.  (Travis Long/The News & Observer/Tribune News Service)

The former president added that his daughter-in-law, who co-chairs the Republican National Committee (RNC), is working on helping North Carolinians in impacted areas cast their votes.

“Lara is working on it. Other people are working on it, and we’re trying to make it convenient for them, but they just lost their house,” Trump said.

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In-person early voting in the Old North State begins Thursday, Oct. 17 and ends on Saturday, Nov. 2.