Election officials in southern states are struggling with the aftermath of two hurricanes

Powerful hurricanes that wreaked havoc across much of the Southeast are presenting election officials with the grim reality that some ballots could be lost in the mail.

While in many cases there are workarounds to resolve the problem, it is part of the complicated preparations for the upcoming general election, particularly in hard-hit North Carolina, a battleground state where communications and power remain patchy in some counties.

Hurricane Helene, which struck the United States late last month, claimed hundreds of lives in a half-dozen states and upended carefully planned election schedules as polling stations were paralyzed and regular communications channels were destroyed.

“I have counties that have completely disappeared, that have completely washed away,” said Mary Beth Tipton, the director of the Board of Elections in Yancey County, North Carolina. “We actually have a post office that is being washed away.”

Tipton said the county of about 18,000 residents had sent out hundreds of mail-in ballots shortly before the flooding began and it was possible some of them were lost. Yancey County went for Trump in 2020 by a 2-1 margin.

Florida county election officials, meanwhile, face a potential new challenge after Hurricane Milton made landfall on the West Coast late Wednesday.

“I speak for my colleagues across the state: It’s a pretty simple formula: Hide, survive, and then we have to assess where we are with the damage and make it work,” said Brian Corley, the elections director in Pasco County, Florida, said Wednesday, hours before Milton reached the state.

The unrest in North Carolina and Florida prompted statewide officials to take measures to respond to the new challenges, including by giving more flexibility to election officials who may need to make last-minute changes to their plans in the wake of the devastation.

Early voting begins Thursday in North Carolina

Several election officials in the western region of North Carolina told CNN they continue to grapple with inconsistent cell service and power dynamics as they try to coordinate workers and inform voters about plans for early voting starting next week.

“There was no communication here,” said Robert Inman, the elections director for Haywood County, which has about 47,000 active voters and leans Republican.

Inman described the damage in some parts of his county as “apocalyptic,” with some roads, homes and other infrastructure destroyed. Three previous polling stations are no longer usable.

Those concerns were shared by Cliff Marr, the elections director in North Carolina’s Polk County, which has about 17,000 active voters and is heavily Republican. Marr said his team’s cellphones kept going out and it was unclear how many of the roughly 500 mail-in ballots his county sent out before the storm might have been lost.

“I don’t know where they were in the mail stream when everything went down,” Marr said. “It’s very difficult to figure out what the status of those out there are, who got it and who didn’t.”

State officials have taken steps to help. The North Carolina Board of Elections unanimously passed a resolution Monday to give counties hardest hit by Helene flexibility to change polling locations, schedules and other aspects of voting. A bipartisan bill passed this week would provide millions of dollars in election assistance and some expansion of absentee and early voting methods for people in 25 counties.

While the state has not determined exactly how many mail-in ballots may have been lost in the storm, officials have so far noted a normal pattern in the number of mail-in ballots cast, Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the state Board of Elections, said during a webinar Thursday. She added that voters with concerns can check the status of their mail-in ballots online and request new ones if necessary.

Bell also said 75 early voting sites will be available next week in the storm-affected region – just five fewer than originally planned. She called it “absolutely outstanding” given Helene’s devastation.

Still, officials in damaged counties are preparing for Election Day.

In Buncombe County, home to left-leaning Asheville and the largest county in western North Carolina, elections director Corinne Duncan said 600 people typically go to the polls on Election Day, but so far only 200 have confirmed their availability.

The county had planned to offer 80 polling locations that day, but no more. “We know we can’t open all of them,” Duncan said.

Despite fears that voter turnout could decline in affected areas, officials in both red and blue districts expressed cautious hope that this would not happen.

“We haven’t been through anything like this before so we don’t know, but we’ve been through Covid and we’ve seen record turnout,” Duncan said. “I am very optimistic.”

Damage Assessment in Florida

In hurricane-prone Florida, officials told CNN this week that they are used to planning for storms like Helene and Milton, which could throw off their preparations just before an election.

Helene, which caused flooding in the western part of the state, permanently closed some polling stations in those areas. But the situation in Florida remains uncertain as local election officials scrambled to reassess the potential disruptions Milton has caused to their plans.

“We have 22 early voting locations that we need to evaluate prior to early voting scheduled to begin on Monday, October 21st. Additionally, we will be evaluating our more than 215 locations for Election Day,” said Christopher Heath, the elections director administrator for Orange County, which is blue.

Other county election offices around the state also said this week that they would conduct new assessments of their election infrastructure after Milton.

Any necessary adjustments will be possible thanks in part to an executive order issued by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis last week that eased restrictions related to changes in election administration for more than a dozen counties hit hard by Helene. The most significant of those changes is giving officials the ability to move and consolidate polling places for early voting and Election Day voting, although state law requires such changes to be made well before the election. Voters in these counties can request that mail-in ballots be sent to locations other than their homes to accommodate voters who have evacuated the area.

Corley told CNN that his Pasco County, which has about 400,000 active voters, lost two polling places on Election Day because of Helene, but that they were able to “redistribute or rename” voters affected by those losses to other counties. Pasco County has already received 15,000 mail-in ballots from voters.

Kari Ewalt, director of administrative services for the Osceola County elections director, said her county has so far only faced a backlog of unprocessed mail-in ballots due to postal service disruptions caused by Milton this week.

“We have to adjust internally what we’re going to do about this because we have to process the mail-in ballots that are coming in,” she said. “We therefore assume that our vote by postal vote on Monday will be associated with a very large workload.”

Ewalt said her office is currently assessing possible damage to the county’s 49 Election Day polling locations and nine early voting sites, but that they were not aware of any issue as of Friday afternoon.

“We are very lucky. Not every county is as lucky as we are,” she said.

South Carolina

Election officials in South Carolina who spoke to CNN consider themselves “lucky” after experiencing one of the worst storms in the state’s history. Despite Helene leaving their counties without water, electricity and cell phones for days, they remain on track to open early polling stations this month.

“We weren’t sure what to expect,” said Conway Belangia, director of elections and voter registration for Greenville County. “We haven’t had a hurricane-like situation like we just had in this neck of the woods, and I’ve been here 32 years. This is unprecedented.”

County election offices across the state were forced to close their doors Wednesday afternoon before Helene’s landfall and gradually reopened last week.

Belangia said his office is facing delays in sending mail-in ballots because of Helene in a district with about 335,000 active voters. About 5,400 ballots were mailed earlier this week instead of the scheduled date of Oct. 4, so it’s too early to tell whether displaced voters will have problems receiving their mail.

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“Our biggest concern is that people can be out and about [to the polls]Belangia said. While Greenville County continues cleanup efforts in some areas, he said all of its initial polling locations are in “good condition” and are expected to open on time in two weeks.

Other election officials in similarly designated disaster areas such as Pickens County and Oconee County share Belangia’s sentiments. Although some residents and business owners have suffered what Oconee County calls “unprecedented damage,” Oconee’s election team is optimistic their community can come together to cast their mail-in ballots and support polling places.

“We should have the most poll workers we’ve ever had here in Oconee County,” said Ryan Nowland, deputy director of Oconee County elections. “We are truly grateful that everyone is willing to support us in this process.”

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