NC lawmakers requiring a few more early voting sites in some Helene-impacted counties
In addition to passing more Hurricane Helene relief, state lawmakers approved legislation Thursday to expand the number of early voting sites in a few western counties.
House Speaker Tim Moore said the bill was needed because some GOP lawmakers representing districts that were impacted by the hurricane reported that their counties did not have enough early voting sites that were easily accessible, or that could accommodate the number of voters who have been showing up to cast their ballots.
The bill, which received near-unanimous approval with a 46-0 vote in the Senate and a 106-2 vote in the House, requires that elections officials in 13 specified counties hit by Helene ensure there is at least one early voting site for every 30,000 registered voters in the county. It’s a temporary measure applying only during the remainder of early voting next week.
During floor debate in the House, however, GOP lawmakers made it clear that the vast majority of those 13 counties were already meeting the requirement, and that the bill was mostly needed to open additional early voting sites in two Republican-leaning counties that didn’t have enough: Henderson and McDowell.
GOP Rep. Jennifer Balkcom told lawmakers that her county, Henderson, normally has four early voting sites, but only planned to have one open this year, even before Helene. She said that with roughly 92,000 registered voters in her county, one site was not enough.
Rep. Dudley Greene, a Republican who represents McDowell County, also said there was need for an additional site in that county.
Balkcom said she waited in traffic for 40 minutes on Tuesday when she visited the single early voting site, at the Henderson County Board of Elections in Hendersonville, to campaign and meet voters outside the site.
The bill that passed Thursday would likely require Henderson County elections officials to open three additional sites. The bill also states the new sites need to be open by Tuesday, which would give local officials four days to prepare the new sites and get them running with sufficient equipment and staff.
Some Democrats raised concerns about whether this was feasible, and whether the local elections boards would have the funding necessary to open multiple new sites and staff them in a matter of days.
Rep. Destin Hall, the chairman of the House Rules Committee, said in response that lawmakers had appropriated around $5 million to the State Board of Elections in the first Helene relief bill that was passed and signed into law by Gov. Roy Cooper earlier this month. Hall said those funds could be used by any local elections boards that needed them to open the additional sites.
In a statement, state elections board spokesperson Pat Gannon confirmed that counties that open new early voting sites following the passage of this bill can be reimbursed by the state board, through the $5 million that was allocated in the first relief bill.
Gannon also said that the Henderson County Board of Elections unanimously decided to consolidate its early voting sites into one location this year because of “relatively low turnout at the other sites in prior elections,” and because “they decided that expanding their one site was more cost-effective.”
“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,” Gannon said.
The 13 counties the bill applies to are Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Transylvania, Watauga, and Yancey counties.
After the storm, Buncombe and McDowell counties removed some early voting sites, while some other counties changed their early voting site locations but kept the same total number of sites they had originally planned on.
Hall said lawmakers included the 13 counties in the bill to make sure that all of them, even the counties that are meeting the benchmark of one site per every 30,000 registered voters, continue to do so through Election Day.
The bill was passed Thursday as a substitute to a local bill, which means that it takes effect as soon as it was passed and ratified by both chambers. Local bills aren’t subject to vetoes by the governor.
Early voting across the state began Oct. 17 and runs through Nov. 2. Individual days and times when early voting sites are open differ by county.
Also on Thursday, lawmakers unanimously approved a second Helene relief package which contains more than $600 million in new funding. That is in addition to the initial $273 million package that was signed into law earlier this month.
This story was originally published October 24, 2024 at 1:14 PM with the headline "NC lawmakers requiring a few more early voting sites in some Helene-impacted counties."
