In nearly every election over the past 80 years, residents in North Fork, North Carolina — a small Appalachian community nestled in the mountainous northwest corner of the state — have flocked to a small cinderblock cottage to cast their ballots.
No larger than the size of a standard school bus, the North Fork Voting House had one window, a screen door, and a leaky metal roof. On frigid election days, the building’s coal-fired stove would leave a tinge of smoke in the air as election workers and nearby residents jockeyed in and out of the unassuming building.
“We were so proud of how crappy it was,” one election worker told ABC News about the community’s love of the simple structure. “It was cold, it was damp, and it was perfect for us.”
One of the last remaining dedicated voting houses in North Carolina, the North Fork facility recently had its roof and door replaced ahead of the coming election, and nearby resident Patricia Beaver had made curtains separating the voting booths using red, white and blue fabric provided by Ashe County’s election director.
“It was not a beautiful place,” said Beaver. “It was kind of one of those funny little places that you celebrate and love.”
But when the remnants of Hurricane Helene dropped unprecedented levels of rain in the area, the North Fork New River swelled — and the rush of water swept away the building, carrying away nearly a century of local history. The cinderblock remnants are now scattered on the riverbank, and the roof rests on the grounds of a nearby property.
“It was completely disheartening,” said Mark Palkovic, a nearby resident who worked at the voting house. “It’s the end of an era because that’ll never get rebuilt, and if it were, it wouldn’t be anything like it was.”
An undated photo on the left shows the North Fork Voting House in Creston, N.C., before Hurricane Helene hit, while the photo on the right, taken by a local precinct worker, shows what’s left of the structure following the storm.
Photos provided by Ashe County Board of Elections
‘A really fluid situation’
What happened to the voting house in Ashe County is not unique. After Hurricanes Helene and Milton swept through parts of the South in a span of three weeks, polling locations in the swing states of North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida were damaged, flooded or altogether swept away, leaving election officials scrambling to relocate polling locations and instill a sense of normalcy just weeks before the election.
“Some sites have been damaged. Some are being used as shelters. Some are completely isolated,” said Henderson County, North Carolina, elections specialist Aaron Troutman. “It’s a really fluid situation, and obviously everybody’s kind of cutting things close as far as making some of these decisions.”
The ongoing emergency response has also complicated election plans because many polling places occupy buildings that are being used by emergency responders or as shelters. In some of the counties hardest hit by Helene in North Carolina, local officials have relocated a majority of their polling places due to damage from the storm and the ongoing hurricane response.
“There are some of them that don’t even exist anymore,” said Mary Beth Tipton, the elections director in Yancey County, where two polling places were washed away by flood waters and the majority of the remaining ones have been relocated.
Hillsborough County, Florida, one of the hardest hit counties in the state, initially lost two polling locations after Hurricane Helene, but officials believe more were damaged in Hurricane Milton. Assessment of the county’s 240 Election Day sites is still not complete because many of the locations still don’t have power.
“One of them had five feet of water in it,” Hillsborough County elections supervisor Craig Latimer told ABC News
Local resident Patricia Bailey used fabric provided by the county’s election director to craft the curtains for the voting booths in the North Fork Voting House, which was destroyed when Hurricane Helene swept through Creston, North Carolina.
Patricia Bailey
Despite the challenges of rapidly adjusting their election plans in the weeks before Election Day, every election official who spoke with ABC News for this story expressed confidence that the necessary changes would be made in time to ensure every vote will be counted in the areas hardest hit by the recent natural disasters.
“We’ve heard a lot of people say, ‘There goes voting this year.’ We want to make sure that stops right there. We are voting this year,” Avery County deputy elections director Joseph Trivette told ABC News.
While election officials have assured displaced residents that damage from the storm will not impact access to voting, the disruptions come as presidential polls show razor-thin margins in key swing states including North Carolina.
“It’s a state where margins matter, and I think it’s entirely possible that this could be a difference maker, at least in some races,” said Christopher Cooper, a professor of political science at Western North Carolina University.
‘Extensive infrastructure damage”
When early voting begins in North Carolina on Thursday, voters will have access to 419 early voting sites, with only four early voting sites lost to Helene.
Buncombe County — which includes the hard-hit city of Asheville — was the only county in the state to shut down some early voting sites, operating ten early voting sites compared to 14 locations that were originally planned. Two of the locations no longer in operation are in fire stations used for emergency relief, and two additional polling places were cut due to staffing issues, according to Buncombe County director of election services Corinne Duncan.
“Our office has been preparing for the 2024 election for years, but we certainly didn’t expect this,” Duncan told ABC News.
Last week, the North Carolina State Board of Elections approved a series of measures to give election officials in the counties hardest hit by Helene more flexibility to change their voting plans, including modifying the locations, dates, and operating hours of early voting sites. Voters in the 25 counties most impacted by the storm have the option to drop off their absentee ballots at any early voting site in the state.
“To have almost all early voting sites open after such a devastating storm is an effort all North Carolinians should be proud of,” North Carolina State Board of Elections executive director Karen Brinson Bell said on Tuesday. “The people of Western North Carolina will vote.”
With early voting set to begin in Florida on Monday, election officials in the state told ABC News they are optimistic that voters will be able to cast their ballots at polling locations. The seven early voting sites in Pinellas County were unaffected by the two hurricanes, and 27 early voting sites in Hillsborough County will be open to voters, officials told ABC News.
“We did, in fact, lose one of the sites due to the hurricanes,” Latimer said. “But we’ve relocated it.”
In a letter to Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd on Tuesday, the Florida Election Supervisors association requested 11 changes for impacted counties, including requesting an extension of early voting through Election Day and the relocation or consolidation of several polling place locations.
“The cumulative impact of these storms has resulted in extensive infrastructure damage, power outages, and displacement of residents, including voters, and poll workers and election workers critical to the electoral process,” wrote two officials with the association.
Georgia — which began early voting on Tuesday — saw no major disruptions to early voting due to Helene and Milton, and the state set a record for the first day of early voting on Tuesday.
‘As normal as we possibly can’
While early voting in North Carolina is set to proceed as planned for most of the state’s voters, officials are still assessing dozens of polling places to determine if they will be operable for Election Day.
Election officials in Yancey County are attempting to relocate ten of the county’s eleven polling places, while officials in Avery County have reduced their total number of polling places after Helene impacted 14 of the county’s 19 voting sites. Two inches of mud remains inside one polling site, the Avery County Senior Center, after three feet of water rushed into the building during the storm, according to county officials.
Avery County now plans to operate eight fewer polling places than normal on Election Day, though county officials have established an additional early voting site in a region of the county impacted by flooding. For the relocated polling places, the county has located alternative sites that officials hope will be convenient to voters.
“Fortunately for us, all the polling sites we’ve had to move are just right next to the precinct over, so they don’t have very far at all to travel,” said Trivette.
In hard-hit Buncombe County, election officials are still working to confirm whether 14 of the state’s 80 polling places will be usable on Election Day, while 464 of the county’s 537 poll workers have confirmed they will work on Election Day.
In addition to dealing with the destruction of the North Fork Voting House, Ashe County needed to relocate six of the county’s 17 polling locations after two polling places flooded and another was knocked off its foundation, according to Ashe County Board of Elections director Devon Houck.
“We struggled real hard to keep things as normal as we possibly can,” said Robert Inman, the director of elections in Haywood County, which relocated three polling places damaged in the storm.
In neighboring Georgia, election officials have identified a total of three polling sites that need to be relocated due to the storm in Richmond, Lowndes, and Columbia counties.
“As far as hurricane impacts, we look pretty solid across the board,” said Gabriel Sterling, a top election official in the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office.