Hurricane Helene washed away homes in North Carolina. It also galvanized the early vote
'We want to have a government that works,' says affected resident
Jason Stokes's Bronco rattles and shakes its way up a narrow, crudely rebuilt mountain road — past mangled cars and homes smashed to barely identifiable pieces against haphazardly stacked piles of massive uprooted trees.
More than 100 people in western North Carolina were killed when Hurricane Helene hit the region in late September — turbocharging rivers, flooding communities and unleashing landslides that wiped out homes, roads and planned polling stations throughout the mountainous region.
It stoked fears that many would not be able to vote in the Nov. 5 U.S. election because of the disaster, but new numbers from the state elections board suggest otherwise.
Statewide, North Carolina's early voting totals shattered previous records, with 57 per cent of 7.8 million registered voters already casting a ballot. But those numbers were even higher — outpacing the rest of the state by two per cent — in the western counties still reeling from the widespread destruction that also displaced 6,000 people.
It's unknown whether the strong early voting numbers will affect Tuesday's turnout.
Stokes said at least three people were killed along this road when tiny creeks bloated and converged into a fast-moving river and uprooted centuries-old trees.
"It just washed things from the top," he said. "It grabbed it, pulled it all with it and took it all to the bottom. So we were finding homes that were a mile away or more. And we're finding pieces here and pieces there."
Stokes and his wife, Anna Ray, watched helplessly as the waters surrounded their hillside farm.
"There were bales of hay, which are about 1,100 pounds, just bouncing down the river as if they were like beach balls," Ray said.
The couple were rescued by kayak from their farm by a rescue crew with the New York State Forest Rangers who were sent in to help. The disaster response galvanized their determination to vote, and they travelled back to the county from the city of Asheville for early in-person voting.
"We want to have a government that works, then we've got to get this vote right," Stokes said.
"That's been a heavy motivator and just making sure ... lives don't get worse after this because it's already enough right now that we have to deal with."
"I just wanted to check off one more thing off my list. It felt important that what if there was a road closure? What if the car wouldn't start?" Ray said.
Twenty-five counties in the region were affected by Helene, 13 of them hit especially hard. Five weeks later, many in the area still don't have access to potable water. Power and communications infrastructure is still being restored, as are roads and sewer systems. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and other aid groups are set up in parking lots throughout the state providing food, clothing and support.
The hurricane also dealt a blow to election infrastructure and created fears it could depress voter turnout. The North Carolina State Board of Elections nimbly moved to ensure those affected by Helene could still vote.
The board unanimously passed emergency measures that granted county officials in the hardest-hit communities permission to change early voting options, extend early voting hours, and relocate and merge election day voting sites.
'It's affected everything'
Even though early voting has been robust, there are fears the storm will affect the final election tally.
"It's affected everything. So there's no doubt that it will in some form," Ray said.
About 15 minutes down the road, John Anglin sits in his truck outside Yancey County's Republican headquarters. A small Starlink is affixed to his dashboard. The back of his truck is filled with donated chainsaws and important safety equipment to hand out to anyone who needs it.
"Those first few hours, it was of a lot of fear, a lot of panic, like, are people OK?" he said.
Anglin, who chairs the local Republican committee, said Helene threw a giant wrench into its election strategy.
"A lot of that focus was going to be on the great things we've done right. Or even on the national platform, what's going on with the presidential race or the governor's race. And so that focus really shifted away," he said.
Instead, the focus has shifted squarely on survival and rebuilding the community. Even so, Anglin's teams still needed to ensure they had a strong ground game to help people who wanted to vote get to the polls.
"There was an offering [from] the state Republican Party to send a helicopter in and to actually fly them out. And that was a cool offering," he said.
In the end, they declined because they were confident they could get people out to the polling stations themselves.
In many ways, Anglin said, he feels that Burnsville, which is the county seat of Yancey County, fared a little better than other areas.
"None of our ballot machines were damaged. They were all in here in the town of Burnsville, so they were all protected and secured," he said.
"Like in one area, Egypt-Ramseytown, that's a combined precinct voting location. That fire station is gone. It was taken out by the waters."
Storm slowed down Democrats' efforts
The state elections board has made sure that seven secure FEMA-style tents are in place where voting infrastructure was washed away, and some other polling stations had to be changed because they are now being used for disaster relief.
"We've had to move 16 or 17 of our precincts," said Kathie Kline, who chairs the Buncombe County Democratic Party.
"And so we have a fair number of precincts in new locations, so we've had to work really hard to communicate those new locations to every voter in those precincts."
Kline's office in Asheville is bustling with volunteers and new canvassers. Helene claimed the most lives in this county. Asheville's riverside neighbourhoods are still a tangled mess of debris, with transport trucks still upended from when they were tossed about like twigs by the floodwaters.
Kline said the storm slowed down the Democrats' efforts for about two weeks. She even had to relocate to Charlotte and work from there for a while. It also meant having to be sensitive to what people were going through and micro-target potential voters.
"Making sure that we're not knocking on doors of people who have been devastated," she said.
"We've had to identify the neighbourhoods that are most devastated and pretty much stay away from them or text," Kline said. "We are also sending out texts so if people want to get engaged, they can. But we're also trying to be respectful of people that are still struggling."
She said despite everything, the party still has a robust group of volunteers ready to drive people to vote on Tuesday.
Kline said she's amused, however, by how eagerly Republicans have embraced the expanded early voting measures.
"Generally the Republicans have opposed early voting, and suddenly they were really clamouring and then claiming that we were suppressing the vote because we had to shorten the hours, because we had a curfew that was in place and we didn't want our poll workers to be driving outside of that curfew," she said.
"It was almost comical to see the Republicans suddenly caring so much about early voting."
Even though the early voting changes were accepted by both parties, Democrats are bracing for potential legal challenges by Republicans if the results are contested.
"We do expect them to mount all kinds of challenges," Kline said.
Helene put 'neighbours first'
Beyond the logistics of casting a vote and the fears over what challenges might occur in the days after the election, Helene had another deeper impact on some voters, including Jason Stokes and Anna Ray.
"The response was to put our neighbours first, to put our politics aside," Stokes said.
"The people who are working together, literally in this case, building bridges. We definitely were not on the same side of anything. We would barely talk to each other in a normal situation," he said.
"It was an opportunity to see that there is some sameness there. There is a way to work together if it matters to us enough. And in this case it did. So hopefully we can take that forward."
"It would be nice to see the same sense of community carry over," Ray agreed as they turn toward their home to do more clean up.
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With files from Victoria Stunt