You know what’s going right in this country right now? About a month ago, Hurricane Helene tore through the Southeast, the deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland since Katrina, flooding communities and washing away whole neighborhoods. And there were legitimate fears that the devastation would impede the ability of locals to cast their ballots.
State and local governments rolled into action to open up early polling places and loosen rules to allow displaced citizens to vote in their new counties, and so far, the early vote in North Carolina and Georgia is thriving.
As of yesterday, more than 2.8 million people had already voted in North Carolina — that’s more than a third of the state’s registered voters. What’s more, the turnout in the 25 counties in FEMA’s designated Helene disaster area in western North Carolina is healthy so far:
“What most of the affected counties are seeing is tremendous turnout,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections. “We have seen a large outpouring just from the voters themselves, coming to the county boards of elections, making sure that they can still be a poll worker, making sure that they’re going to be able to cast their ballot.”
For those wondering about the partisan breakdown of the registration of those voters, 34.1 percent are registered Republicans, 33.3 percent are registered Democrats, and 32.6 percent are no party or minor parties.
Meanwhile, in Georgia, more than 2.8 million people have voted; that’s a bit more than 40 percent of the registered voters in the state. Georgia does not break down their voters by party registration.
Those two states are getting the most attention because of their status as swing states in the presidential election; Hurricane Helene also affected parts of Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Florida’s early vote turnout is at 4.5 million (!) out of 13.8 million, or 32 percent of all eligible voters.
South Carolina’s early vote turnout is at more than 808,000 out of 3.3 million registered voters, or 24 percent of all eligible voters.
Tennessee’s early vote turnout is at more than 1.5 million, out of 4.2 million registered voters, or 35 percent of all eligible voters.
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