Election officials in southern states are grappling with fallout from dual hurricanes | CNN Politics

Powerful hurricanes that wreaked havoc on wide swaths of the southeast have election officials facing the dim reality that some ballots may be lost in the mail.

While in many cases there are remedies to solve the problem, it’s part of the complicated preparations for the upcoming general election, especially in hard-hit North Carolina, a battleground state where communications and power remain spotty in some counties.

Hurricane Helene, which hit the US late last month, caused hundreds of deaths across half a dozen states and upended carefully laid election plans as polling centers were crippled and regular communication channels were shattered.

“I’ve got precincts that are completely gone, that are completely washed away,” said Mary Beth Tipton, the director of the board of elections in North Carolina’s Yancey County. “We’ve actually got a post office that’s washed away.”

Tipton said the county of about 18,000 people had mailed out hundreds of absentee ballots just before the flooding began and that it’s possible that some of them have been lost. Yancey County went for Trump in 2020 by a 2-1 margin.

County election officials in Florida, meanwhile, are facing a potential new challenge after Hurricane Milton made landfall on its western coast late Wednesday.

“I speak for my colleagues around the state: It’s a rather simple formula – it’s hunker down, survive, and then we have to assess where we are with damages and make it work,” Brian Corley, the supervisor of elections in Florida’s Pasco County, said on Wednesday, hours before Milton hit the state.

The disruptions in North Carolina and Florida prompted statewide officials to spring into action to respond to the new challenges, including by giving greater flexibility to election administrators who may need to make last-minute changes to their plans in the wake of the devastation.

Early voting begins Thursday in North Carolina

Multiple elections directors in North Carolina’s western region told CNN they continue to grapple with inconsistent cell-service and power as they seek to coordinate workers and update voters on plans for early voting that begins next week.

“Communications have been nonexistent around here,” said Robert Inman, the elections director for Haywood County, which has about 47,000 active voters and leans Republican.

Inman described the damage as “apocalyptic” in some parts of his county, where some roads, homes and other infrastructure were destroyed. Three prior polling places are no longer usable.

Such concerns were echoed by Cliff Marr, the elections director in North Carolina’s Polk County, which has roughly 17,000 active voters and is strongly Republican. Marr said his team’s cell phones keep cutting out and also said it’s unclear how many of the roughly 500 absentee ballots his county mailed out before the storm could have been lost.