Hurricane HeleneNorth Carolina’s deadliest storm in modern times devastated communities in the state’s westernmost corners, but didn’t deter resilient residents from advance vote. In fact, voter turnout is breaking records in a battlefield condition that could determine the outcome the 2024 presidential election.

“What most affected counties are seeing is a huge turnout,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections. “We’ve seen a big outpouring just from the voters themselves, coming to the county election boards, making sure they can still be poll workers, making sure they’ll be able to they voted.”

With damage estimates exceeding $50 billion, Helene left some of the worst-hit regions without power, clean water, critical roads and infrastructure more than a month after making landfall.

But poll workers’ quick shift to emergency measures and coordination with state administrators immediately after Helene led to a relatively smooth early voting process for residents of the 25 counties designated by FEMA for disasters. Nationally, more than 2 million cast their ballots in the first week of early voting in the battleground state.

Questions lingered in some quarters about whether this badly damaged area of ​​North Carolina would be ready for the 2024 election. Last week, GOP Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, suggested the Legislature should take consider awarding the state’s electoral votes to former President Trump before the votes are counted.

“Look, you were disenfranchised in 25 counties, you know what that vote probably would have been,” Rep. Harris said during a panel discussion at the Lincoln Reagan Dinner in Maryland.

Harris’ comments drew immediate backlash from his fellow North Carolina GOP Rep. Patrick McHenry. “It makes no sense to prejudge the outcome of the election, and that’s a misguided view of what’s happening on the ground in North Carolina,” McHenry said.

In a statement to CBS News, Harris offered clarification and said his “theoretical” exchange was taken out of context. “As we have said time and time again, every legal vote should be counted,” Harris said. “Voting is going really well in western North Carolina right now.”

The measures implemented by the Legislature and the State Electoral Council in recent weeks allowed special accommodations to be made for the most affected counties. These include new polling places, extended voting hours and more locations to drop off ballots. Of the 80 locations originally planned for early voting in the affected counties, 76 are currently operational, with plans to expand, according to election officials.

For Yancey County residents like Victor Mansfield, not voting was never an option. “Nothing was going to stop me from voting,” he said.

Mansfield lives along a one-lane mountain road in Burnsville, North Carolina, in one of the counties hit hard by the storm. He had no electricity for four days before going down to a shelter at a Red Cross center. Mansfield said he was surprised by the turnout on the second day of early voting when he cast his ballot. “I was voter number 1,276,” he said. “I know other people I go to church with whose house was completely destroyed … they made sure they were here so they could vote early.”

More than a third of Yancey County’s 14,600 registered voters have cast their ballots early and in person so far, according to county board officials, averaging about 700 voters per day since voting began on Oct. 17.

Joseph Trivette, deputy director of the Avery County Board of Elections says that despite significant challenges, voter turnout in his county was noteworthy.

“We average about 500 a day. I know that might not sound like a lot in other places, but for Avery we have a total of 13,000 voters give or take … an average of 500 a day is huge,” Trivette said. “Avery County always comes to the polls, no matter who you vote for.”

Buncombe County, the largest in western North Carolina and home to 214,530 registered voters, initially saw modest early voting numbers. But within days, there was an impressive increase in turnout, with an average of over 7,000 voters per day.

“I love the trend, people are coming out every day to do this,” said Jake Quinn, chairman of the Buncombe County Board of Elections. “If we can keep this going until next week, we’ll be pretty good.”

The Republican National Committee and the North Carolina Republican Party said more could be done to address the limited access of hurricane-affected voters in traditionally Republican-leaning western counties. One letter To the Buncombe County Board of Elections and the State Board of Elections, they alleged “partisan voter suppression” in Buncombe County and called for expanded accommodations for voters from outlying areas.

Buncombe County election officials say 10 of the 14 planned early voting sites are operational, with 80 planned for Election Day, including a FEMA tent polling place and 500 county workers.

“We just want to make sure that this election is as smooth as possible under these extraordinary circumstances. And we’re confident that we’ve been so careful about following processes and procedures properly, following the law, documenting everything we do. , every decision we make,” Quinn said. “We maintain integrity in some difficult circumstances.”

contributed to this report.