Will Hurricane Helene disrupt voting?

One week after Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida and began its devastating rampage throughout the southeastern United States, the death toll reached over 200 on Thursday, with hundreds still missing.
Helene is the deadliest hurricane to strike the U.S. mainland since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and has displaced hundreds of residents and wiped out entire communities who are still without vital resources, including medicine, electricity, food and water.
Helene’s extensive fallout “continues to pose a political and humanitarian test for the (Biden) administration,” per AP. With Election Day looming, voting processes may be significantly disrupted in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida — key battleground states that could determine control of the White House and the Senate.
For some states in the Southeast, in-person and mail-in voting will likely be logistically scrambled by Helene’s impact. In North Carolina, where over half of Helene’s victims were, early voting is set to proceed on Oct. 17, according to reporting from The Guardian, but sticking to that schedule could be an uphill battle:
On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris visited Augusta, Georgia, to witness the aftermath of Helene’s destruction in the Peach State, where she handed out meals and met with local officials. The Democratic presidential nominee spoke in front of a home damaged by fallen trees, where she “announced that the federal government would cover 100 percent of the costs of debris removal and other emergency protective measures for three months to help the state recover,” The New York Times reported.
“The president and I have been paying close attention from the beginning to what we need to do to make sure the federal resources hit the ground as quickly as possible,” Harris said. “That work has been happening.”
Also on Wednesday, President Joe Biden surveyed the Carolinas via helicopter, where many roads are still inaccessible, and the president is expected to return to the region to visit Florida and Georgia on Thursday, according to The Associated Press.
Earlier this week, former President Donald Trump visited Valdosta, Georgia, where his campaign partnered with Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian humanitarian charity, to provide supplies to residents affected by Helene, ABC News reported. Trump criticized the Biden administration for its response to the disaster in his remarks.