Election interference in North Carolina: Hurricane Helene devastates areas of the battleground state with limited access to voting just weeks before election
Potentially millions of people living in and around western North Carolina could be prevented from voting in the upcoming election following all the destruction caused by Hurricane Helene.
Officials in the battleground state are reportedly working on ways to restore voting in Asheville and surrounding areas after Helene destroyed election board offices and suspended mail service for the time being.
An astounding 14 election board offices in the Appalachian region, including one in the city of Asheville, are closed with mail service suspended while emergency responders assess the damage and come up with some kind of remediation plan.
Absentee voting has already begun in North Carolina and in-person early voting is scheduled to commence on October 17 before concluding on November 2, just three days before Election Day on November 5.
The independent media is reporting that the region, which is mostly rural and includes 11 counties, has about 570,000 of the state's 7.7 million registered voters. Of this, there are 145,000 Democrats and 185,000 Republicans.
The fact that there are substantially more Republicans than Democrats in the damaged areas of Appalachia is significant because North Carolina is a battleground state that barely leans Republican, hence why many now consider the state to be "purple" rather than "red."
(Related: Be sure to check out our earlier coverage about Hurricane Helene that shows a lot of the catastrophic damage that occurred throughout Appalachia.)
Destroying swing states before the election
Officials are said to be scoping out new locations for alternative polling stations since many of the usual ones were destroyed and / or are now inaccessible due to the damage caused by Helene. As such, voting could be tricky in the Tar Heel State, which is very convenient for Democrats.
"State Board staff have contacted election officials in the affected counties in Western North Carolina to make sure they are safe, to gather information on damage to election and voting facilities, and to assess potential effects on absentee and in-person voting," the North Carolina Board of Elections said in a statement.
State election officials have created a special website that now serves as a "source of information for voters affected by the hurricane." The website will "include information on county board office closures, tips for voters affected by the storm, and basic information about voting in this election," officials say.
As "luck" would have it, two other battleground states are also seeing election troubles as a result of Helene: Florida and Georgia. The former seems to have everything under control, having dealt with many devastating hurricanes over the years, but the same cannot be said for the Peach State.
As impactful as the hurricane itself now is on the election in terms of potentially keeping voters from voting, the other side of the coin is that the federal government's lack of response to it – the Biden regime is much more focused on Ukraine, of course – could drive more voters to pick Donald Trump instead of Kamala Harris.
Even left-leaning CNN now admits that Trump may end up with a political advantage because of the storm, even if voting stations and polling places are destroyed and inaccessible on Election Day.
"The governor's doing a very good job," Trump commented about Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp during a recent visit to Valdosta, which was hit hard by Helene. "He's having a hard time getting the president (Biden) on the phone. I guess they're not being responsive."
The world is in a state of constant shock and awe right now as major calamities seem to be occurring one after another without end. More on all that is available at Chaos.news.
Sources for this article include:
