North Carolina lawmakers on Thursday tasked county boards of election in the 13 most impacted counties from Tropical Storm Helene to open at least one early voting site for every 30,000 registered voters in their county.
The 13 counties are: Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Transylvania, Watauga and Yancey counties.
However, State Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said all but two counties already meet that threshold.
Henderson and McDowell counties are the only ones that do not, and therefore are required to find additional early voting sites by Oct. 29. Early voting will end statewide at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 2.
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Henderson County has more than 92,000 registered voters and one early voting site, while McDowell County has about 31,000 registered voters and one site, according to State Board of Election data.
Both of those counties have traditionally been strongholds for Republican voters.
The next highest ratios are Rutherford County, which has two early voting sites for over 47,000 registered voters, and Buncombe County, with 10 sites for 216,000 voters. While Rutherford also leans Republican, Buncombe is one of the most Democratic-leaning counties in the state. The legislation passed Thursday will not affect those counties.
The legislation and discussions came Thursday during the second legislative meeting after Tropical Storm Helene hit Western North Carolina.
State Rep. Jennifer Balkcom, R-Henderson, said her home county has one early voting site, although in the past it’s usually had four sites.
The local board of elections unanimously voted to scale back to one site in April, before Tropical Storm Helene, due to funding and logistics issues.
Balkcom said she had to wait 40 minutes in traffic to get to the Henderson County Board of Elections to vote Tuesday, and that constituents are asking for more sites.
Rep. Dudley Greene, R-McDowell, said there has also been interest in his community in adding an early voting site. A potential site has already been identified, he said.
Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, said he’d rather defer to the local county board of elections’ decisions on early voting sites instead of mandating that they add more.
However, Rep. Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, said the legislature gave the State Board of Elections $5 million in the first disaster relief package instead of the $2 million they requested for these sorts of things.
“The State Board of Elections has 5 million bucks sitting around to be able to help with this very thing,” he said.
“To make sure these folks — some of whom still don’t even have power — they don’t have to wait two and three hours to go and vote because there’s only one polling site in an entire county, in some instances.”
The House of Representatives voted 106-2 to approve the legislation, while the Senate voted unanimously in favor. Harrison and Rep. Abe Jones, D-Wake, were the sole nos. The bill still requires Gov. Roy Cooper‘s signature to become law.
Early voting began Oct. 17 in all 100 North Carolina counties, and will continue through Saturday, Nov. 2.
“If this is what the legislature enacts, we will do what we have to do because we follow the law, we administer elections based upon the law, but we are definitely trying to share with the legislators — and the local election officials are doing the same — that it could present challenges,” Brinson Bell said while the legislature met.
“What has happened thus far is that, in most of these counties, we are seeing turnout that’s on par or greater with 2020 so we feel like the early voting sites that they’ve identified that are right for their counties are working.”
The legislation, Senate Bill 132, asks the impacted counties to consider “geographic diversity” in their early voting site selection.
A bipartisan majority of each county’s board of elections must agree on sites. The legislature recommends that county boards of elections only use taxpayer-supported sites, and can give as little as 24-hour notice to the owners about plans to use as an early voting site.
Meetings about early voting sites will be open to the public, and be posted publicly at least 12 hours in advance.
Information about early voting additions will also be distributed to stage agencies, shelters and groups serving eligible voters impacted by Helene.
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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