North Carolina residents defy hurricane aftermath on first day of early voting

Turnout for early in-person voting has started strongly in the presidential battleground of North Carolina, including in mountainous areas where deadly Hurricane Helene destroyed property and upended lives but apparently did not dampen a fierce desire to participate in elections.

More than 400 early voting sites opened as scheduled on Thursday for the 17-day period, including all but four of the 80 sites previously anticipated for the 25 western counties hardest hit by the storm, said the state board of elections executive director, Karen Brinson Bell. She credited election workers – including volunteers affected by the severe weather – emergency management officials and utility crews.

“I know that thousands of North Carolinians lost so much in this storm. Their lives will never be the same after this tragedy,” Brinson Bell told reporters in Asheville, the region’s population center and a city devastated by the historic rainfall. “But one thing Helene did not take from western North Carolinians is the right to vote in this important election.”

Helene’s arrival in the US south-east three weeks ago decimated remote towns throughout Appalachia and killed at least 246 people, with a little over half of the storm-related deaths in North Carolina. It was the deadliest hurricane to hit the US mainland since Katrina in 2005 and the deadliest overall in the US since Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017.

Several dozen who died in North Carolina were from Buncombe county, where Asheville is located. Thousands in western North Carolina still lack power or clean running water.

But that didn’t stop many from voting. About 60 people – most bundled up in jackets, hats and gloves for the chilly weather – lined up to cast a ballot at the South Buncombe Library in Asheville before the polls even opened at 9am on Thursday.

Among them was 77-year-old Joyce Rich, who said Helene made early voting more urgent for her. Rich said while her house was largely spared by the storm, she and her husband still need to do some work on it. Meanwhile, family members who don’t have power or water access are coming over to take showers.

“We decided, let’s just get it finished,” Rich said. “You never know what’s going to happen.”

In Polk county, an area along the South Carolina border that was also hit by Helene, the parking lot of the county elections board was so packed with early voters that an election worker was forced to direct traffic, with storm debris still evident.

Voter Joanne Hemmingway, who spent 10 days without power in her home near Tryon, had always planned to vote early, and was thankful that election officials were able to still pull it off after Helene struck.

“Not having it? That never crossed my mind,” Hemmingway said.

In adjoining Henderson county, officials closed lanes on a major highway to help move election traffic, and golf carts ferried voters from an auto parts store parking lot to the county’s lone voting site.

There, voter Michael Dirks said he found himself looking forward to voting after Helene, figuring it would be an important milestone in “getting back to normal, whatever that might turn out to be”.

In some places, voters stood in line for at least an hour.

Officials in the 25 counties affected by the storm were still evaluating election day polling locations, with the “vast majority” expected to be available to voters, Brinson Bell said. So far, officials have requested tents for about a dozen sites, she added.