Key swing states rush to ensure Hurricane Helene won’t upend the 2024 election Boston 25 News [Video]

In North Carolina, a critical swing state that will help decide the 2024 presidential election, Hurricane Helene flooded polling places, shuttered election offices, disrupted mail-in ballot delivery, shut down communication systems and displaced millions of voters when it roared ashore on Sept. 27. Now, with the election just weeks away, officials are scrambling to make sure residents will still be able to have their voices heard.

“The destruction is unprecedented and this level of uncertainty this close to Election Day is daunting,” Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the North Carolina’s board of elections, said at a press conference earlier this month.

Helene’s worst impacts in North Carolina were concentrated in western areas of the state where Republican and unaffiliated voters make up a combined three-quarters of registered voters, according to analysis by Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College. Last week, the state’s election board unanimously approved a slate of emergency measuresthat will allow …