North Carolina Governor Signs Hurricane Relief Bill Allocating $5 Million to State Election Board

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) signed a hurricane relief bill into law last week, which allocated $5 million to the State Board of Elections to make accommodations for voters after Hurricane Helene.

The board can distribute these funds to county election officials for a variety of measures, like deploying mobile voting units, changing voting sites, reprinting absentee ballots, purchasing emergency communication systems and hiring more election workers.

The State Board of Elections passed a resolution last Monday to allow 13 county election boards to take emergency measures to ensure their elections run smoothly post-hurricane. 

These measures include processing absentee ballot requests until 5 p.m. on Nov. 4, changing times and locations of early voting sites and bringing in election workers who are registered voters in other North Carolina counties.

Then, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed the Disaster Recovery Act of 2024 on Wednesday, and Cooper signed it on Thursday. This law appropriated $273 million to different state agencies, including $5 million to the State Board of Elections.

The law reinforced the guidance that the State Board of Elections issued last week and applied it to 25 counties, instead of 13. 

Also, the law stated the board’s resolution would remain in effect until the certification of the 2024 election or until amended by the State Board of Elections.

Read the law here.

Original post, Oct. 7

The North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) unanimously passed a resolution Monday allowing special accommodations for voters in the 13 counties most impacted by Hurricane Helene.

Karen Brinson Bell, NCSBE’s executive director, began the Monday morning meeting with a status update.

“What a difference a week makes,” Brinson Bell said. “When we were last together to consider the emergency authority regarding absentee board meeting schedules for these affected counties, we were looking at 14 offices that could still not open for work or to the public, and today, all county offices are open in North Carolina, and this is just quite the feat.”

However, she said many voters and election workers still face numerous struggles in the storm’s aftermath. One of the board members, Stacy Eggers IV, said that he has visited five of the counties impacted and has seen the damage firsthand.

“These areas received over 20 inches of rain in less than about 36 hours,” Eggers said. “As of today, we still have over 100,000 North Carolinians without power. Communication is significantly limited, and our roads remain in a crippled state.”

The five-member board determined that in multiple western North Carolina counties — Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Transylvania, Watauga and Yancey — the “infrastructure for elections administration and voters’ accessibility to polling places and mail service” was “severely disrupted as a result of the disaster.”

Therefore, the board members passed a resolution to allow election boards in these counties to make changes with a “bipartisan majority vote.” 

They can amend their early voting plans — like adding or removing voting sites and changing hours or days that sites are open — and modify their Election Day polling places. 

On Nov. 5, these counties can establish voting sites for a precinct outside of the actual precinct. If a county doesn’t have the infrastructure to operate an Election Day site in a certain precinct, they can create a site in a different area or county for their voters to go to.

Also, the election boards in these counties can bring in election officials and poll workers who are registered voters and residents of other North Carolina counties.

Additionally, county boards can make accommodations for absentee voters. They can process absentee ballot requests until the day before Election Day. Without this change, the request deadline would’ve been Oct. 29.

Under the proposal, voters in these counties can now hand-deliver their absentee ballots to any Election Day voting site by 7:30 p.m. that day. Otherwise, they would only be allowed to submit them to their county’s election office. 

Voters can also return their ballots to a different North Carolina county’s election board by 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 5 if they were displaced to another county after the storm.

Usually, the state has “Multipartisan Assistance Teams” to assist with absentee ballot requests and absentee voting at places like nursing homes and assisted living facilities to accommodate voters with disabilities. Under the resolution, the affected counties can also send these teams to disaster shelters and other places where disaster relief is being provided.

Then, NCSBE members will be authorized to help the counties process voter registration applications and can allow election staff from other counties to assist with administrative duties.

Also, the state election board will work with the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management to “coordinate needed resources, which may include but are not limited to temporary facilities, generators, temporary restrooms, and other needs” to conduct elections.

During Monday’s meeting, Kevin Lewis, one of the Republican board members, expressed his concern about still promoting “election integrity” while allowing voters to return ballots to counties other than their home county.

“You don’t want to just get to the end of the election, and folks are blindsided with the number of ballots that have been returned,” Lewis said.

 Due to his recommendations, the board passed the resolution with an amendment that would require the state’s counties to provide weekly reports of how many ballots they’ve received and where they received out-of-county ballots from.

The board has the power to pass this resolution under a state law allowing them to exercise emergency powers in a scenario where the normal election schedule has been impacted by a natural disaster.

Because they made these changes, Brinson Bell said that every county in the state will hold in-person early voting beginning on Oct. 17 as scheduled and Election Day voting. The voter registration deadline remains Oct. 11. She also said this is possible because of support from counties across the state as well as other states.

“It has just been a tremendous outpouring of support, not only from the 100 counties of North Carolina wanting to be of assistance to their elections family but also from people across the country reaching out to the vendors who work with these counties through their voting equipment, poll books and their printing services,” Brinson Bell said.

She added that while this resolution was important, the board’s work is far from over.

“There may be further actions that we identify as we further assess the situation, as we learn more from the various utility companies about what’s possible and what’s not possible for early voting or even Election Day,” Brinson Bell said. “And then, of course, we will have to consider if there are any actions that need to be taken in order to successfully complete the canvass period for these counties.”

Read the NCSBE’s resolution here.

Read more about how the hurricane is affecting the state’s elections here.