Hurricane Helene Wreaks Further Chaos on North Carolina Voting

North Carolina may struggle to send out mail-in ballots following the widespread destruction caused by Hurricane Helene and chaos wrought by former presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. 

The United States Postal Service announced Sunday that operations at more than two dozen facilities across North Carolina had been suspended due to the effects of Hurricane Helene. The Category 4 storm has caused widespread flooding, killing more than 100 people across several Southern states. 

North Carolina’s early voting had previously been delayed by Kennedy’s efforts to have his name removed from the ballot, after more than one million ballots had already been printed. 

Although Kennedy’s request was denied at first, the state Supreme Court ultimately ordered that the ballots be reprinted, delaying the beginning of early voting by two weeks, costing the state thousands of dollars, and shortening the legally required voting period.  

Kennedy has plainly stated that he intends to get his name off the ballot in states where its presence would detract from Donald Trump—such as North Carolina, a key battleground state. 

As a result of Kennedy’s plot to see Trump elected president, military ballots for the state were sent out on September 20, and roughly 190,000 absentee ballots were mailed out on September 24. Now it’s unclear when these ballots will arrive with voters.

Hurricane Helene demonstrates the existential threat of a changing climate to a democratically held election. This catastrophic storm could have other effects on election administration by potentially destroying voters’ ballots, displacing poll workers, and damaging voting sites.

North Carolina’s voter ID law does contain an exemption for victims of a natural disaster within 100 days of an election who cannot produce identification. 

Last week, the North Carolina state Board of Elections announced that it had removed 747,274 names from its voter rolls since 2023, mostly people who had moved from one county to another and people who had not voted in the last two federal elections, according to WECT.