The Jefferson County election office still isn’t open to the public after Hurricane Helene barreled through southeast Georgia last week.
So on Monday — the last day to register to vote in this swing state — Election Director Susan Gray grabbed a fan and a folding table and set up outside.
“We’ve had probably just a handful of people, but at least I was here. That’s the main thing,” Gray said.
A major hurricane barreling through a swing state just a few weeks before a presidential election is the stuff of nightmares. But aside from having to accept a few applications in the sweltering Georgia sun, the state seems to have avoided major delays and disruptions.
Of the 2,400 in-person polling locations throughout the state, only three so far have had to be relocated because of storm damage. Most of the roads have reopened, and the secretary of state’s office has so far not pushed for extending the deadline to either register to vote or request an absentee ballot.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Georgia is on track to begin early voting next week on Oct. 15, in part thanks to local officials such as Gray.
“They really put public service first because they understand how important voting is,” he said.
The most pressing issue facing some local election officials this week is figuring out how to deliver fewer than 700 absentee ballots in areas where the U.S. Postal Service has suspended service because of storm damage.
About half of those ballots are in the Augusta area along the Georgia-South Carolina border. In those cases, counties can switch to private carriers to deliver ballots. Or they can hold the ballots and have voters come show their ID to pick them up.
“We’re working on either those voters (being) able to pick them up from another neighboring post office or an alternative means of delivery to make sure they get out this week and follow the law,” said Gabe Sterling, chief operating officer for the secretary of state’s office.
Monday was the first day election officials could mail absentee ballots. So far, more than 219,000 voters have requested one. Absentee ballots were crucial to Democrat Joe Biden’s victory four years ago in Georgia’s presidential race. That year, 26% of people voted absentee, and Biden won 65% of those votes. But the number of absentee voters has been falling in recent elections.
Statewide, at least 33 people were killed and more than 1 million customers were without power and other resources for weeks following the storm’s destructive path through the state. But the state’s voting equipment and the county election offices that store it were mostly unharmed, save for some blown-out windows in Jenkins County in southeast Georgia.
“Put plywood on the window, they’ll be good to go,” Raffensperger said.
Their big fear now is if another storm were to come through before Election Day. Hurricane Milton has formed in the Gulf of Mexico but is not currently not expected to impact much of Georgia. Sterling said the secretary of state’s office is discussing things such as how to keep cellphones working and power connected to generators.
“We have that conversation every single day,” he said.
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