North Carolina residents will see changes to early voting after Hurricane Helene
Donald Trump won North Carolina by about 1.4 percentage points in 2020
By Aubrie Spady Fox News
Published October 8, 2024 2:20pm EDT
North Carolina election officials are adjusting their voting rules to ensure residents in areas impacted by the recent hurricane damage can vote early in the upcoming election.
Hurricane Helene made a damaging sweep across the southeast, covering swing states that had already started early voting.
But the storm caused severe damage to several predominantly red counties and early voting centers as focus shifted to disaster relief.
On Monday, the North Carolina Elections Board passed a bipartisan emergency resolution that reformed the state's early voting process in 13 counties. Notably, all except one, Buncombe, voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020.
The adjustments include changing or adding voting sites and maintaining their availability, extending the hours when a voting site is open, and adding or reducing days that any site is open within the early voting period, according to the election board.
Voters in these counties will also have more time to request an absentee ballot, with the deadline being Nov. 4.
The state's elections board identified 13 counties in western North Carolina as the most impacted by the hurricane.
The counties that will see the changes applied to their early voting processes include: Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Transylvania, Watauga, and Yancey.
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/north-carolina-residents-see-changes-early-voting-after-hurricane-helene
