Legislature orders new early voting sites in two western NC counties

A new Helene disaster relief effort by state lawmakers Thursday wasn’t just about money — lawmakers also approved a measure requiring more early voting sites in the western counties of Henderson and McDowell.

Early voting has already started, and questions swirled Thursday about whether local officials would be able to pull off the feat on such short notice before early voting ends on Nov. 2.

Republican leaders at the state legislature were adamant that the changes — in two heavily Republican counties — were necessary. In the end, most Democrats voted for the plan as well and Senate Bill 132 passed 46-0 in the Senate and 106-2 in the House.

Republicans in North Carolina have long tended to favor less access to early voting, not more. But this specific change for Henderson and McDowell counties was lobbied for by the North Carolina Republican Party, amid the party’s concerns that the storm and its aftermath could depress voter turnout in the heavily conservative western part of the state.

WRAL reported Wednesday that a national conservative activist is calling on North Carolina lawmakers to attempt to block the certification of the state’s votes in the presidential election if Democrat Kamala Harris beats Republican Donald Trump, suggesting they use Helene as an excuse to do so.

Right-wing political activists call for NC lawmakers to decide 2024 presidential election results after Hurricane Helene's impact

In 2020 Donald Trump won North Carolina with 49.9% of the vote. But 73% of McDowell County voters supported Trump that year — more than almost anywhere else in the state — as did 59% of Henderson County voters.

“The General Assembly has acted to ensure voters have more options to make their voices heard and we thank them for moving swiftly to address this issue," North Carolina Republican Party spokesman Matt Mercer said after the legislature approved the changes Thursday.

House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, told reporters Thursday that while the situation out west is still improving many roads are still closed, so having more early voting sites could help. "We need to make it easy for folks," he said.

Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, said she’s broadly in favor of more early voting options. But she said this plan seems more likely to cause problems than solve them. She was one of the two Democrats to vote against the bill Thursday.

“Establishing these early voting sites takes months of planning and setting up,” Harrison said Thursday during the legislative debate over the bill. “There's no way these sites are going to be secure, and supervised, in an acceptable fashion.”

She and others pointed out that Henderson County officials decided earlier this year, before Helene hit, to cut down the number of early voting sites to just the one that’s open now — because they felt having multiple sites was too expensive as well as logistically difficult to staff.

Pat Gannon, a spokesman for the State Board of Elections, said the state would be able to help Henderson and McDowell counties cover the extra costs by using some of the $5 million extra that state lawmakers already approved for elections, in a previous Helene relief aid bill.

But while funding won’t be a concern, Gannon said, there are concerns over whether local officials will be able to find a place to put the new voting sites — or the people needed to staff them.

“Henderson County would need to open two additional sites for five new days each, and it would require them to extend the days their second site is open by three additional days. So, they would need to staff 13 new days of early voting,” Gannon told WRAL. “It would require McDowell County to open a new site and staff it for five new days of early voting. They have no plans to staff this amount of additional voting with a couple days’ notice. And they have no sites identified that will accommodate all these new days of voting.”

Gannon also noted that Helene doesn’t appear to have stopped people from exercising their right to vote, at least in Henderson County. Voter turnout at this point in early voting is substantially higher in 2024 than it was in 2020.

“So far, they’ve been voting more per day at that one site than in all four sites in 2020 — 3,525 voters per day this year versus 2,780 per day in 2020,” he said.

Republicans say that heavy turnout is part of the reason why they want to open up more voting sites: Residents have complained of traffic jams at the polling place, including the local state representative.

“I will tell you, for a fact, I was waiting in the traffic for 40 minutes to get to a parking space on Tuesday,” said Rep. Jennifer Balkcom, R-Henderson.

WRAL reporters Laura Leslie and Paul Specht contributed reporting

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