The NC State Board of Elections has won a national award for its emergency planning and response to Hurricane Helene, which helped ensure accessible and safe voting for residents of Western North Carolina.
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) announced Wednesday that the State Board received a Clearinghouse Award in the “Exemplary Contingency Planning and Emergency Response Efforts” category for large jurisdictions.
The State Board’s hurricane response is one of 53 programs honored by the EAC this year out of a record 258 entries.
The election boards in Buncombe, Currituck, Durham, and Wake counties also won 2024 Clearinghouse Awards. Durham, Rockingham, and Union counties received honorable mentions. For information on all Clearie winners, read EAC Clearinghouse Award Winners 2024.
Voting Through Helene and High Water
Hurricane Helene struck Western North Carolina in late September 2024, six weeks before the election. Absentee voting had begun, and in-person early voting would start in less than three weeks. More than 100 people died in NC. Flooding washed away homes, businesses, and communities. Power, water, sewer, and internet services were out for days – months in some areas.
The State Board immediately started working to ensure voters could cast ballots despite the devastation. Our mantra: “We don’t stop an election. We figure out how to proceed.”
State Board staff worked with Board members, county election boards, local, state and federal emergency and law enforcement partners, the N.C. National Guard, the U.S. Postal Service, state and local IT professionals, and others to ensure voting was available in the 25-county disaster area.
Despite Helene and thanks to the hard work of county boards of elections, almost all early voting sites and Election Day polling places opened on time for voters. This included seven large festival tents set up by emergency partners to serve voters in place of washed-away buildings.
The Board’s field support team kept in constant contact with county election officials and ensured their needs were communicated to state officials and partners. They also supported county workers emotionally, as some were flood victims themselves.
The response paid off. Voter turnout in those 25 counties was 74.88%, higher than the statewide turnout of 72.64%.
The response was only possible because of partnerships developed by state and county election officials over many years; through the work of the State Board members, whose resolutions allowed flexibility for voters in affected areas; through state funding for an advertising campaign; and through hard work and resilience of election officials.
“We are extremely proud of the efforts of our state’s election officials and our partners to pull off a successful election under the most trying of circumstances,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board. “Hundreds of thousands of Western North Carolinians were able to vote in the important 2024 election because of State Board planning, along with the hard work and resiliency of county election officials and the invaluable assistance of our emergency management and law enforcement partners.”
The EAC presents the awards annually to celebrate the hard work of election officials across the country.
“This year’s Clearinghouse Award-winning programs truly shined amid the high voter turnout in 2024,” the EAC commissioners said in a prepared statement. “They are examples of the outstanding work election officials did to support tens of millions of voters during the presidential election.”
The EAC is an independent, bipartisan federal agency solely focused on election administration. Submissions were judged on innovation, sustainability, outreach, cost-effectiveness, replicability, and the generation of positive results.
Four Clearies in Five Years
This is the fourth Clearie for the State Board in five years under Brinson Bell’s leadership.
In 2021, the State Board won for its “Democracy Heroes” campaign, which recruited nearly 60,000 potential election workers across the state for the 2020 general election, held during the Covid-19 epidemic. Read State Board Receives National Award for 2020 Poll Worker Recruitment Efforts.
In 2022, the State Board won for its “Help Us Be Successful” (HUBS) program, which is still in place and fosters collaboration between the state agency and the 100 county boards of elections to improve election administration for voters and candidates. Read State Board of Elections Wins National Award for its HUBS Program.
And in 2024, the State Board won a Clearie for its Attack Response Kits, or ARKs. These “election offices in a box” include a satellite internet device, laptop, cell phone and other equipment which allow local election officials to keep working in the event of power or internet outages due to cyberattacks or inclement weather. ARKs were deployed as part of the Hurricane Helene response in 2024. Read State, County Election Boards Win National Awards for Innovation, Voter Education.