Neighboring states adjust voting schedules after Hurricane Helene. Why hasn’t Georgia?

Prospective voters in the Carolinas and Florida will have more flexibility in how they cast their ballots for the upcoming election, concessions that officials made in the weeks since the storm tore through the Southeast.

In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said earlier this week that the state’s elections will move forward as normal. But a federal judge is hearing arguments Thursday from voting rights groups who want the state’s voter registration deadline extended due to the damage caused by Hurricane Helene.

U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross will decide whether the case brought by the Georgia conference of the NAACP, the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda and the New Georgia Project has merit. They are arguing that widespread power and internet outages could have deprived Georgians from the opportunity to register on time. On Wednesday, the judge decided against ordering an extension of the voter registration deadline , which passed Oct. 7, but Thursday’s hearing has opened the door for her to consider additional evidence that demonstrates widespread voter disruption.

In Florida, as Helene came to a head on October 3, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order giving election officials in 13 affected counties added flexibility for early and absentee voting.

North Carolina, which endured some of the most serious damage, also made changes this week . Voters can now pick up absentee ballots in-person from a county elections office until the day before the election.

With the expanded measures, displaced North Carolinians can also now return their absentee ballots to another county.

While Georgia was not as hard hit as some neighbors, Helene dealt a serious blow to the state’s vital infrastructure.

“This storm is the most destructive storm we’ve ever seen hit Georgia Power Service territory,” said Jeremiah Haswell, the utility’s director regulatory affairs, in an address to the Georgia Public Service Commission.

As of last week, at least 37 counties were struggling with power at local election facilities, according to the federal lawsuit. In Augusta, around 95% of the city and surrounding Richmond County were without power and internet in the wake of Helene, the city’s mayor said Thursday on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s political podcast.

At least 10 lawsuits related to election issues have been filed in Georgia in recent weeks.

Georgia has 8.2 million registered voters, according to the secretary of state’s office. Most polls show a tight race between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, and each campaign believes every vote could determine which candidate wins the state’s 16 electoral votes.

In the immediate aftermath of the storm, Raffensperger made a statement on X reiterating the state’s commitment to safe elections and directing users to a website to check any storm-related updates to polling locations–despite the fact that at that point, over 218,000 Georgia Power customers remained without power and many without internet.

In a press conference Monday, Oct. 7, in the hours before registration closed, Raffensperger balanced the seriousness of the storm with the decision to push forward with the deadline.

Raffensperger discussed the scene at some of Georgia’s hardest hit counties, including Jenkins County. “Windows were blown out but no machines were broken. They’ll put some plywood on the windows and they’ll be good to go.”

Patricia Rich, Chief Registrar at the Jenkins County Board of Elections, confirmed that they had been using plywood to cover damages and that all their election machines were stored in a separate building.

Gabe Sterling, the Secretary of State’s chief operating officer, noted that minimal damage had been done to polling sites, and emphasized voters’ personal responsibility.

“It is up to you to make those decisions, it’s not up to your elected officials to grab you and carry you to the polls. You have to have some agency about these things,” said Sterling.

Nancy Gay, who runs elections in Columbia County, west of Augusta, said that most of her precincts didn’t have power in the weeks after Helene. She was able to be in contact with all but seven of them.

Poll worker training was pushed back by a week in Columbia, but no other scheduling changes were made.

Gay says she and her staff all worked 10-hour days non-stop following the storm, their office running on a generator. But Gay said she’s confident it didn’t hinder registration.

“We haven’t had any issues or any complaints from anyone,” said Gay, noting people came into the office in-person to register if they didn’t have power. “We’ve never been through anything like that. But our county is pretty resilient.”

Deb Cox, Supervisor of Elections in hard-hit Lowndes County, said her office was able to bounce back quickly.

“Elections are a critical infrastructure, so it’s not really an issue,” said Cox, noting the office was able to connect to fiber optic internet. “We’re all good. We’re ready to rumble.”