How Helene Has Upended North Carolina’s Election Plans

For decades, the North Fork Voting House has served as the official polling place for nearly 600 residents in the small mountain community of Creston, N.C. The tiny cinder block building was recently updated with a freshly painted white door, handmade curtains for the voting booths and a new metal roof.

But the voting house was one of several structures destroyed by the remnants of Hurricane Helene late last month, uprooted by the epic flooding and mudslides that swept through western North Carolina. By the time the floodwaters subsided, the new metal roof was wrapped around a tree in a precinct worker’s yard.

“You just think, ‘Really, something else?’” said Devon Houck, the director of the Ashe County Board of Elections. “There is already a lot of scrutiny, a lot of eyes watching North Carolina because of its swing state status, and now this.”

Thousands of weary residents across western North Carolina, many of whom still don’t have water or power, are now confronting a unique question for a battleground state: What will the last weeks of a divisive and exhausting election look like in such a devastated region?

The North Carolina State Board of Elections approved several emergency measures on Monday to ensure that voters in the 13 counties affected by the storm could still vote in the Nov. 5 election, including allowing local officials to designate alternative polling places.

But county elections officials say they face a formidable challenge over the next four weeks as they navigate an intense level of national attention, combined with a beleaguered voter base that may not want to vote anymore, or not know how to do it.

About 10 early voting sites in western North Carolina had significant damage or accessibility issues, state elections officials said. But Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the state board of elections, said that all county election offices were open as of this week. Voters displaced by Helene, she said, would be allowed to turn in their absentee ballots to election boards wherever they were.

If suitable polling sites are not in place close to November, the National Guard could erect tents and Federal Emergency Management Agency workers could bring in trailers, Ms. Bell said: “It may look a little different in these affected counties, but we fully intend to offer early voting starting on the 17th.”

Still, the devastation across the region has transformed the final weeks of election season.

Many local campaigns have been stopped as candidates have been forced to abandon door-knocking and phone banks and instead help their communities dig out of the mud.

“We could care less at this point,” said Kristie Sluder, a Republican running for State Senate in a district that includes liberal Asheville. “All of our priorities have been reset. Local candidates are having to reprioritize their agenda. And honestly, this storm has reset civil priorities.”

In the closing weeks of the campaign, Ms. Sluder had been planning to attend candidate forums and host town halls. “And now I’m at the community center serving breakfast and dinner,” she said.

Door knocking? Some front yards have turned into creek beds. Putting up signs? Dozens of roads remain impassable, and some candidates, like Ms. Sluder, are resorting to four-wheel A.T.V.s to get around. Political town halls? That feels tone deaf, some local candidates said.

“It feels insensitive for me to even worry about what happens in November,” said Martin Moore, a Democrat running for the North Carolina Court of Appeals. He was stuck at home in Asheville for days without power, cell service or much gasoline because of the storm.

Mr. Moore is running in a competitive statewide race that the Democratic Party has been eager to win in a quest to reclaim court positions currently dominated by Republicans. While he hoped to campaign in full force in the final weeks, he said, “it’s impossible to imagine asking people to be in the heat of all the things that election season requires” while also having no water.

The storm has also muddled a congressional race in western North Carolina that the Republican incumbent, Representative Chuck Edwards, has been favored to win. Mr. Edwards announced last week that he would cease all campaigning, including scheduled fund-raisers, because it seemed in poor taste given the need for recovery efforts. His Democratic opponent, Caleb Rudow, said that most of his campaign staff remained without power, water or shelter.

“How do we go out and canvass in a place where, one, a lot of people have moved and left; and two, where the roads aren’t very good?” Mr. Rudow said. “And how do you approach people in a way that treats them with kindness?”

The predicament has echoes of the 2016 election in North Carolina, when the Republican governor at the time, Pat McCrory, was slipping in the polls against the Democratic candidate, Roy Cooper, until Hurricane Matthew wrecked much of the eastern coast in October of that year. As Mr. McCrory visited destroyed neighborhoods and held daily news conferences, his poll numbers improved. Mr. Cooper, the current governor, won the race by less than a percentage point.

The current Republican nominee for governor, Mark Robinson, has filled his social media pages with photos and videos of himself appearing in disaster zones, offering support. But Mr. Robinson, whose campaign has been in disarray since a CNN report linked him to offensive comments several years ago on a porn website, has also injected partisan politics into the recovery efforts, criticizing Mr. Cooper’s response to the storm.

Mr. Robinson’s Democratic opponent, Josh Stein, the state attorney general, has also posted images of himself assisting western communities and announced that his office was investigating claims of price gouging associated with the floods.

“People try to use disasters to their own political ends; I mean, that’s an old story in American politics,” said Christopher A. Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University.

Former President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have each visited the state since the storm, not always attracting much enthusiasm from voters.

“Politicians are politicians, so it’s ideal not to have it be for political purposes and clout,” said Kara Seymour, 45, an Asheville resident who supports Mr. Trump, as she sat outside a library to connect to its Wi-Fi.

The ultimate effect of thousands of residents of western North Carolina being unable to cast ballots is unclear, since the area itself is politically mixed.

Dr. Cooper, the political science professor, conducted an analysis of 2020 voting data and found that in the 13 counties affected by Helene, roughly 55 percent of the votes went for Mr. Trump, compared with 45 percent for Mr. Biden.

Michael Bitzer, an expert on North Carolina politics at Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C., wrote on his blog that “when we talk about the political dynamics of the Helene-impacted counties in North Carolina, we’re describing a more Republican, more rural, older and more white voter population” that represents about 17 percent of the votes cast in North Carolina in 2020.

Asheville, though, is one of the state’s most liberal pockets, and some Democrats fear that low turnout in the city could affect their chances in the extremely close races up and down the ticket.

“What’s the political impact?” Dr. Bitzer said. “Partly, I would say the following: Heck if I know.”

Ellie Moore, 53, who lives in a rural area east of Weaverville, said that many of her neighbors had been displaced because of the storm, so she wondered whether the election would even be front of mind for them. “Do they really care at this point? Just getting a bite to eat and cleaning themselves is paramount right now,” she said.

Still, Ms. Moore and others said they would try to vote, despite the hurdles.

Deanne Eversmeyer, 63, a horticulturalist who also lives east of Weaverville, beside the Great Craggy Mountains, has been an outspoken supporter of Ms. Harris on her Facebook page. She said that a damaged polling place would never keep her from voting.

“If we had to walk all the way to vote, we would,” Ms. Eversmeyer said.