The area impacted by the storm is significantly more Republican than Democratic, the state election board shows.
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.
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