NC elections officials encouraged by record-setting turnout a week into early voting, even in western NC

North Carolina elections officials say they’re working long hours to make sure victims of Hurricane Helene can cast a ballot in this year’s elections — and that so far, voter turnout in the 25 counties under Helene-related disaster orders is actually higher than the state average.

The updates come as early voting is set to enter its final week, and as some Republicans seek to use the damage from Helene as pretext for invalidating North Carolina’s election results, if Democrat Kamala Harris wins the presidential race in this key battleground state.

On Thursday, U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, R-Maryland, cited Helene in saying Republican leaders in North Carolina should hand the state’s Electoral College votes to Republican Donald Trump — regardless of how the state votes — according to reporting from Politico. Harris, the leader of the hard-line Freedom Caucus, is one of the most influential Republicans in Congress.

The western part of the state is a Republican stronghold, and Harris said that could give GOP officials something to point to, to try invalidating the results of the election if Trump loses. He was backing a conservative activist who, WRAL reported Wednesday, said at a rally in Selma that any loss by Trump will signal an “illegitimate election.”

That raised alarms for Democrats, in addition to some Republicans. U.S. Rep. Deborah Ross, D-N.C., slammed Harris’ comments as “un-American” on Friday.

Politico also reported that U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry — a North Carolina Republican who’s the former Speaker of the House and represents several of the western counties hit by the storm — said the Freedom Caucus leader doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“It makes no sense whatsoever to prejudge the election outcome,” McHenry, who isn’t running for reelection, told Politico. “And that is a misinformed view of what is happening on the ground in North Carolina, bless his heart.”

Harris on Friday said his comments were taken out of context, the Associated Press reported.

Karen Brinson Bell, who leads the North Carolina State Board of Elections, told reporters Friday that voting in western North Carolina has gone better than expected so far, and that officials are working overtime to make sure voters in the area aren’t disenfranchised.

Nearly 31% of registered voters in those affected counties have already cast a ballot. Brinson Bell said that’s more than that region saw by this point in 2020. It’s also more than the statewide turnout of about 29.4%.

On Friday, WRAL asked Trump running mate JD Vance about the Trump campaign’s concerns with western North Carolina, and whether a Kamala Harris victory in North Carolina should be thrown out if she wins. Vance took questions during a rally in Raeford.

“Should the state results be challenged? I think that what we should try to do instead is make sure that every voter’s vote counts in the state of North Carolina,” Vance said. “You know, all across the state of North Carolina — whether we’re talking about Charlotte or New Bern or the western part of the state.”

A member of the Freedom Caucus from North Carolina, Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, is running against fellow U.S. Rep. Jeff Jackson for attorney general. Whoever is attorney general in 2025 could attempt to overturn election results; as a member of Congress in 2020 Bishop signed onto an effort by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. But a spokesman for Bishop’s attorney general campaign on Friday strongly criticized his fellow Freedom Caucus member’s suggestion to pre-determine the results of the election in North Carolina in favor of Trump, calling it “absurdity.”

“He does not agree, and he communicated that forcefully to Rep. Harris today,” Bishop spokesman Pat Ryan said. “North Carolinians are very much exercising their right to vote, including in the Helene-impacted counties. And Republican voters are leading early voting for the first time in memory. Our election is just fine.”

Brinson Bell spoke to reporters Friday about the progress that’s been made in responding to the storm, praising “the dedicated election professionals across our state and the dedicated poll workers who staff these voting sites” — a team of thousands of workers, some of them volunteers and some full-time professionals, who are running elections in the state’s 100 counties.

“The fact that things are going smoothly is also a testament to the voters and campaigners who have shown civility and a recognition that every eligible voter deserves a peaceful opportunity to exercise their right to vote,” she said.

More than 2.3 million North Carolina voters have cast ballots as of Friday morning. North Carolina set an all-time record for voter turnout in 2020, with 5.5 million people — 75% of the state’s registered voters — participating in that year’s election. So far, Brinson Bell said, the state appears to be outpacing its 2020 numbers.”We are setting records in North Carolina,” she said. “The first day of early voting is the largest first day that we’ve seen, including 2020.”

Voting in western NC

Earlier this month state lawmakers approved $5 million more for elections in the disaster stricken areas. They also signed off on a number of policy changes the elections board had recommended to ensure voting went as smoothly as possible in the western counties affected by the storm, most of which lean heavily Republican.

Those actions were bipartisan, passing the Democratic-controlled elections board and the Republican-controlled state legislature by unanimous votes.

The legislature passed another bill this week aimed at adding more early voting sites in McDowell and Henderson counties, which again passed with bipartisan support. There were questions about whether county officials would be able to find usable sites and enough new volunteers to staff them, considering early voting has already begun and training for election volunteers happened weeks ago. But on Friday, Brinson Bell expressed confidence that they’d figure out how to make it work.

“I’m glad that the legislature has such confidence in our abilities, because this is a quick pivot that we’re going to have to pull off,” she said. “But these are dedicated election professionals who are, you know, committed to carrying out the law as it is written, and so that is what we will do.”

Brinson Bell said the election infrastructure in western North Carolina has been holding up better than expected: The 25 affected counties have, combined, been able to operate 76 of the 80 early voting sites they planned to use before the storm hit. And while officials originally thought they’d need to bring in 15 large tents from the military for temporary polling places on election day itself, cleanup work and road repairs have gone faster than expected and they now expect to only need half that number of makeshift precincts.

She also acknowledged that the storm has displaced thousands of people. An estimated 6,000 are living in temporary shelters, and many more have taken up with family or friends. One of the main changes the legislature approved, on the election board’s recommendation, was to allow those people to more easily cast a mail-in ballot. Brinson Bell said she wanted to remind people in the disaster-affected counties that that’s an option.

“If you are not going to be able to vote in your home county during the early voting period or on election day, you must act quickly,” she said. “You should request an absentee-by-mail ballot now — and I do mean now — to be delivered to wherever you are currently staying temporarily.”