Food bank bounces back from Helene to tackle hunger crisis in western NC
The staff of the Asheville-based Manna Foodbank tried their best to prepare for Hurricane Helene.
Workers at the nonprofit’s primary distribution site just feet from the Swannanoa River moved tens of thousands of food items onto tall shelves ahead of the storm’s arrival. The shelves, they thought, would be high enough to protect the food if the building flooded.
But after the storm’s catastrophic lurch through western North Carolina, the region’s largest and most wide-reaching food bank was almost fully submerged in rippling waves of brown water. Its stockpile of food, now more badly needed than ever, was gone.
Floodwaters engulf Manna Foodbank’s main site in Asheville.
“We weren’t even able to go in and rescue any of the top-shelf food or anything because of how severely damaged everything was,” said Micah Chrisman, director of communications for Manna. “We lost everything. Our forklifts, our warehouse, all of our computers. The whole operation, basically.”
That operation served more than 150,000 people a month in western North Carolina, which struggles with worse levels of food insecurity than other parts of the state. About 20 percent of adults in the region have limited or uncertain access to food, according to the WNC Health Network.
The area’s hunger issues arise from several economic, geographic and social factors: Poverty and unemployment are more pervasive there than in eastern and central North Carolina, and many residents are unable to afford food. The predominantly rural and mountainous terrain can make a trip to the nearest grocery store challenging for people without transportation.
“We definitely had an issue with food insecurity already, especially in rural communities where some of these families that I’ve met and talked with have to drive over 30 minutes in any direction just to get food of any kind,” Chrisman said. “There were a lot of food deserts that already existed here. People might have been able to get junk food from a gas station, but they didn’t have access to actual groceries.”
Helene, he said, has “only exacerbated the need” for nourishment. In the days after the deadly storm, western North Carolina went from being one of the most food-insecure parts of the state to being, arguably, one of the hardest places to find food in the nation.
Wiped out
Fortunately, Manna moved its fleet of trucks to higher ground before Helene barreled through the area. The vehicles were undamaged, which allowed the food bank to quickly establish a pop-up distribution site with supplies donated by Feeding America, a nonprofit national network of more than 200 food banks, and the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
“All of our inventory was completely wiped out at the start of this, and so we had to replenish the supplies,” Chrisman said. “Since then, some incredible efforts have come together where grocery chains and different places that are coming back online are able to give us some of their food resources that are still safe to consume.”
Overturned vehicles near the site of Manna Foodbank’s destroyed facility in Asheville. Credit: Manna Foodbank
Several of the families who have relied on Manna for meals in recent weeks did not struggle for food before the storm, Chrisman said. Some may have had refrigerators loaded with food that went bad after days without power. Others might have been forced to flee their flooded homes and were unable to find food elsewhere.
“There are people from the hardest-hit communities who are coming to us in need of food assistance that maybe would not normally need assistance because they might have been laid off from their job because the business was flooded,” Chrisman said.
Many people in the area, he added, have been “humbled by this whole ordeal of having no running water for all this time and not having access to food.”
Chrisman said some of the food bank’s employees and volunteers “lost their homes and everything else” to the hurricane. Undeterred by their own hardship, they have continued working throughout the crisis.
“They’re still showing up every day helping deliver food or distribute food to families in need,” he said.
Manna has leased a shuttered FedEx facility near the Asheville Regional Airport to serve as its new center of operations. The food bank has also been rebuilding its stockpile with donated goods.
“As the word’s gotten out, people have been sending orders from Amazon and Instacart or driving up with bags of groceries because they had extra and just wanted to give to the people who need it most,” Chrisman said.
Road to recovery
Other efforts are being made to address food insecurity in Helene’s wake.
Last week, Gov. Roy Cooper’s office said FEMA and other “federal partners” had delivered 9.7 million liters of water and 7.7 million meals “to support both responders and people living in the affected communities.” Writing in a news release on Sunday, the White House said FEMA “continues to send commodity shipments and voluntary organizations are supporting feeding operations with bulk food and water deliveries coming via truck and aircraft.”
“Mobile feeding operations are reaching survivors in heavily impacted areas, including three mass feeding sites in Buncombe, McDowell and Watauga counties,” the release said, adding that the “massive operation” is being bolstered by The Salvation Army, which has deployed mobile kitchens to the area.
William Ray, director of N.C. Emergency Management, said his agency is assisting with “feeding operations in concert with our local partners.”
“This is a historic disaster, the magnitude of which we have never experienced before in our state,” Ray said during a recent news conference. “The road to recovery will be long, but North Carolinians are strong and resilient, and together we will recover.”
At the same conference, Kody Kinsley, secretary of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, said more than 10,000 cases of baby formula had been delivered to the region. The department, he said, had also increased the flexibility of its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, allowing recipients to buy hot food, which is ordinarily not covered, from participating vendors through Nov. 3.
On Oct. 6, NCDHHS reissued 70 percent of the previous month’s SNAP benefits to help people in the disaster area replace food that had been lost or was no longer safe to eat. More than 227,000 beneficiaries across a 23-county swathe of western North Carolina automatically received the reimbursement, totaling $24 million in benefits.
Beginning Tuesday, storm victims who are not currently enrolled in SNAP can pre-register for a one-time stipend to buy food through the Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or D-SNAP. The program is open to people who “suffered losses/damages related to Hurricane Helene,” according to NCDHHS.
Pre-registration can be completed online through the state’s ePass service. Registration will be available by phone and in-person at designated offices in the affected counties beginning Friday.
“Much is underway, and there will be much more to do,” Kinsley said. “We all remain committed to the health and well-being of everyone in the region, in mind and body, for the long haul.”
Apply for Disaster-SNAP
Online pre-registration begins Tuesday, Oct 15.
Beginning Friday, Oct. 18, residents can apply by phone by calling the D-SNAP Virtual Call Center at 1-844-453-1117 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays, and from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday and Sunday.
To manage call volumes, individuals are asked to call on their assigned day based on the first letter of their last name:
10/18: A-G
10/19: H-M
10/20: N-S
10/21: T-Z
10/22-24: Open to all
Local residents can also apply in person in their home counties.
Applying for FEMA aid in NC after Tropical Storm Helene
What to know when getting ready to apply to FEMA for assistance after Tropical Storm Helene hit North Carolina.
Applying for FEMA aid in NC after Tropical Storm Helene is a story from Carolina Public Press, an award-winning independent newsroom. Our breakthrough journalism shines a light on the critical overlooked and under-reported issues facing North Carolina’s 10.4 million residents. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Out of the mud. Talking with storm survivors in Yancey and Mitchell counties.
A week after Tropical Storm Helene hit NC, storm survivors in Yancey and Mitchell counties talk with CPP. Their stories and a photo essay.
Disruption from port strike will hamper Western NC recovery
Even though longshoremen agreed to end port strike after three days, the flow of supplies has been affected, will slow down Helene recovery.
Disruption from port strike will hamper Western NC recovery is a story from Carolina Public Press, an award-winning independent newsroom. Our breakthrough journalism shines a light on the critical overlooked and under-reported issues facing North Carolina’s 10.4 million residents. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
In Helene-ravaged Buncombe, even ‘gray water’ is tough to find
By Anne Blythe and Will Atwater
The Asheville public water system suffered catastrophic damage from the unprecedented flooding and upheaval caused by the remnants of Hurricane Helene.
While people throughout the city and Buncombe County have been hungering for answers about when their taps might start trickling again with drinkable water, there’s been a barrage of questions, too, about where they can get nonpotable, or gray water.
In a region overwhelmed by the waters that rushed through the mountains in the past week, the commodity has been difficult to come by for safe personal and household use.
“The French Broad River, the Swannanoa River — all these rivers in our area should be treated as basically a hazmat site,” Stacey Wood, a Buncombe County spokesperson, said during an Oct. 4 storm update. “Please do not touch the water or get near the water if you do not have to. There are other resources. We will make other resources available to you if that is your circumstance.”
“We cannot stress enough that all of this water flowing through our community right now should be treated as [if] it is a hazardous material,” Wood added.
Still, toilets need flushing. Other cleanup tasks require water that’s free of mud and storm debris. And the drinkable water is too valuable a resource to send it down the drain into wastewater systems.
“We’ve actually had more difficulty in securing nonpotable water than we have had in potable water,” Lillian Govus, a Buncombe County spokesperson, said during an Oct. 3 briefing with reporters.
Avril Pinder, Buncombe County manager, told reporters during several briefings this week that 10 sites are set up across the county where tankers distribute non-drinkable water for people who bring their own containers.
A tanker filled with nonpotable water was quickly emptied at one of those distribution centers, the William W. Estes Elementary School in southern Asheville. But the county continues to hunt for sources of gray water that can be trucked in to help storm-weary residents.
No timeline on a timeline
Helene dumped record rains across an already rain-soaked 25-county mountain region in North Carolina a little more than a week ago. Most every county received at least 10 inches of rain, and at least one weather station reported a three-day accumulation of more than 31 inches.
Swift water rescues were conducted in downtown Boone in Watauga County. Much of Chimney Rock, a quaint tourist village in Rutherford County, was reduced to rubble. Storm damage has been reported from as far west as Cherokee County to Mecklenburg County.
Hurricane Helene caused widespread devastation in Western North Carolina. The dam at the WNC Nature Center on the Swannanoa River was ripped apart. Credit:Bill McMannis / Flickr Creative Commons
Buncombe, the most populous county in western North Carolina, was among the hardest hit with at least 72 dead. People still hindered by power outages and communications barriers have tuned in by car radios and gathered in community spots with internet access to listen to the county’s twice-a-day updates on Facebook that also are broadcast live on Blue Ridge Public Radio.
In an Oct. 4 afternoon briefing, Ben Woody, Asheville assistant city manager, brought photos to give a glimpse of the damage to the municipal water system. There are 1,800 miles of water pipeline, Woody said, enough that if laid out in a straight line end to end it could take you to Miami and back. Not all of it is damaged, but large chunks are.
Pipes that were once buried in the ground were exposed or gone. Roads to important plants are destroyed too.
“This event washed away probably 25 feet of earth,” Woody said, showing a photo of one site that was typically a creekbed people could walk across. It’s now carved out by floodwaters, exposing a large broken pipe.
Despite all the progress city workers and others have made on repairing the extensive damage, Woody refused to hazard an estimate on when the system might be up and working again.
“I’m not going to provide a timeline, and I’m not going to provide a timeline on when I’ll provide a timeline,” Woody responded to one reporter on the video call. “What I will tell you is we will update this community when we have information, and we’ll be here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to provide updates. And we’ll be here Tuesday and Thursday to answer questions.”
A plea echoed far and wide
That leaves people in the storm-ravaged county facing more days, and likely weeks ahead, in which they’ll be lining up for water they can drink and use for cooking from pallets that have been trucked or flown into the region.
Soldiers with 875th Engineering Company, 505th Engineer Battalion and 630th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 113th Sustainment Brigade deliver water and food to West Buncombe Elementary School for aerial pick up on October 1, 2024. Credit:U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Denné Allen
Firefighters from New York have come in to help build community reception centers, also known as disaster reception centers, which are pods where people can come and take showers or perhaps wash clothes.
Others have been hauling nonpotable water from creeks, streams, pools and other sources to their homes to flush toilets or use for other household tasks.
The county manager cautioned the community again on Friday afternoon about water, soil and wells that might be polluted from the storm. The county had been in touch with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA.
“We reached out to the EPA for guidance,” Pinder said during the Oct. 4 afternoon storm update. “They are aware of potential issues, and they are working to evaluate health concerns.”
In the interim, Pinder urged residents to “please exercise an abundance of caution.”
“This is not the time to do stream cleanups unless you are part of an official agency or organization,” Pinder said. “We know a number of materials were swept into the rivers from industrial facilities, houses, farms and more, and we all want to restore our community back to its natural beauty as quickly as possible, but please hold off until we have assurance from the experts that it’s safe to do so.”
Some people in Buncombe County use private or shared wells, but they, too, have been hampered by the storm flooding.
“No one should consume water from private or shared water wells that have been flooded — that means well heads covered with water — until the well has been tested for bacteria, fecal chloroform and inorganic chemicals, including volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, pesticides, herbicide, petroleum-based products and nitrates or nitrites,” Pinder said earlier in the week. “These wells should be considered contaminated until tested.”
The county manager also urged people to not assume that it was safe to consume water from wells that had not been flooded.
“The recommendation would be to boil any water before consumption, even if the well was not flooded, until tests can be completed,” Pinder said.
Thirty-seven of the 40 pump stations were working, either on full power or backup power sources, by Thursday, Govus said. “Our sewage district has been operational throughout this entire disaster,” she added.
But without municipal water flowing into households such things as flushing toilets, washing clothes and other once mundane tasks have been temporarily halted in many homes.
“The team is still looking for nonpotable [water],” Pinder said Thursday, “If anyone out there has a nonpotable source of water, please call the [Emergency Operations Center]. Finding nonpotable water has been harder than I thought.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, has a team of 500 workers on the ground in North Carolina who have played a critical role in the recovery response. They have supplemented the private supplies of water Asheville city officials secured with mass feeding and hydration operations.
North Carolina National Guard soldiers ready supplies for distribution in response to Tropical Storm Helene, at the Asheville Regional Airport on Oct. 2, 2024.
MaryAnn Tierney, a regional FEMA administrator, told reporters during an Oct. 3 briefing that FEMA also has been working with county and state officials at the state Emergency Management operations center in Raleigh to get more gray water to the region, although there wasn’t a timeline for when that would materialize.
“That’s something that we’ve been discussing with the county,” Tierney said. “This is also being discussed in Raleigh … a way to distribute in bulk, nonpotable water so people can do things like clean their plates and flush their toilets.”
For certain tasks such as washing dishes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends boiling nonpotable water first. The CDC also recommends rinsing dishes in a separate container with water treated with household bleach.
Avoiding disease
As local, federal and state officials scramble to provide potable and nonpotable water to western North Carolina residents, it’s important for people to follow safety procedures when dealing with water, said Rachel Noble, a researcher at the UNC Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences. Noble said that even if people have running water in their homes, they should follow state-issued guidelines and boil water before drinking it.
“The last thing that western North Carolina needs right now is a sanitation issue,” she said. Noble recounted what happened a few months ago in war-ravaged Gaza in the Middle East to illustrate what could go wrong if water in western North Carolina isn’t properly treated.
“There was actually a Vibrio outbreak in Gaza because people started getting diarrhea from drinking poorly treated water,” Noble said. “You have a situation where the hurricane is causing problems, but you don’t want diarrhea and communicable disease as a layer on top of this. What that means is that you want all members of the community to abide by these drinking water guidelines so that community level sanitation stays effective.”
The “damage and economic loss” in the southern Appalachian region caused by Helene already is estimated to be at least $225 billion, according to a news release from AccuWeather Global Weather Center.
“Helene brought historic devastation and has tragically changed lives forever,” Jon Porter, AccuWeather chief meteorologist, said in a video distributed by AccuWeather. “The level of human suffering, the rising death toll and the tremendous damage to people’s homes and businesses, as well as to critical infrastructure, from telecommunications to roads and highways and water supplies, has been overwhelming.”
Gov. Roy Cooper (left) takes a tour of Ashe, Watauga, and Avery counties where he met with victims of Hurricane Helene, along with community and business leaders to discuss relief and recovery efforts on Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. Credit: Paul Barker / NC Governor’s Office
Porter added that there would be no quick fix for the massive destruction of the region caused by the storm.
“While recovery operations have already started, it will be a long process given the widespread destruction of homes, businesses and infrastructure,’ Porter said. “Previous disasters suggest that even 10 years after such a damaging storm, rebuilding and recovery efforts may still be ongoing in some places.”
Porter also cautioned about public health issues that might arise from a protracted recovery.
“The long-term impacts from flooding could also contribute to health conditions due to exposure to mold, mildew, contaminated floodwaters and other hazards,” Porter said. “Tragically, in the coming decade, there may be thousands of excess deaths indirectly caused by the storm or stress from experiencing the devastating impacts.”
Flood-ravaged North Carolina races to restore voting access after Helene
There are battleground states, and then there’s North Carolina. Former President Donald Trump won the state by 1.3 percent in 2020, his lowest margin of victory in any state, and polls now show Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris within just 2 percentage points of each other there. It also has more electoral votes than several of the other swing states that will decide the November election, including Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
“Kamala Harris wins North Carolina, she is the next president of the United States,” Roy Cooper, the Democratic governor of North Carolina, said at an event in New York City last week.
In western North Carolina, moisture-laden Helene collided with a cold front that was already dropping rain on the Appalachian Mountains. Hundreds of roads in the region are now impassable or have been wiped off the map by flooding and landslides, communication systems are down, and hundreds of people are still missing. As the North Carolina Department of Transportation put it, “All roads in Western North Carolina should be considered closed.” With just weeks until November 5, thousands of people displaced, mail service shut down or restricted in many ZIP codes, and many roadways shuttered, officials are now rushing to figure out how to handle voting in the midst of disaster.
“This storm is like nothing we’ve seen in our lifetimes in western North Carolina,” Karen Brinson Bell, one of North Carolina’s top election officials, told reporters on Tuesday. “The destruction is unprecedented and this level of uncertainty this close to Election Day is daunting.”
Delivery of absentee ballots in North Carolina had already been delayed by three weeks by former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s last-minute lawsuit to take his name off of millions of already-printed ballots. The state’s election process is already in full swing: the deadline for voter registration in North Carolina is October 11, the early voting period in the state begins on October 17, and early voting ends on November 2. “We will take the measures necessary to ensure there is voting,” Brinson Bell said. But there are innumerable issues to solve first, and state officials still don’t have a full assessment of the damage Helene caused.
“There’s a cascading series of problems,” said Gerry Cohen, a member of the elections board for Wake County, the state’s most populous county, which includes Raleigh.
At the moment, the central logistical problem is that the U.S. Postal Service has suspended service across much of western North Carolina. Even before the storm, more than 190,000 North Carolinians had requested mail-in ballots this election. The agency does not yet have an estimate of when mail will be restored — damage is so severe in some ZIP codes that it may be weeks or even months before local roads are passable. The issue is compounded by the fact that in rural areas, some postal workers use their own vehicles to deliver mail. Neither the state nor the Postal Service knows how many of those cars were destroyed by the storm.
“At this time, we are still assessing damage and impacts,” a spokesperson for the Postal Service told Grist. “As we continue our work on this, we will continue to communicate with local boards of election in impacted areas to ensure the ongoing transport and delivery of election mail as soon as it is safe to do so.”
Residents of Asheville, North Carolina, gather at a fire station to access WiFi and check emergency information after Hurricane Helene. The storm caused record flooding throughout western North Carolina.
Melissa Sue Gerrits / Getty Images
Under state law, it is up to each voter to request a new ballot to the temporary address where they are staying. Voters must mail these ballots back in time for them to reach election offices by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day. The state used to have a three-day grace period for late-arriving ballots, but it ended that policy last year. The Elections Board is currently assessing whether it will ask the state to reinstate it. There’s also no way of tracking where the absentee ballots that counties already sent out ended up, or whether the delivery of those ballots was affected by the storm. “Who knows where they are,” Cohen said.
And then there’s the matter of in-person voting, which faces further logistical hurdles. Brinson Bell said that while there have been no reports of voting equipment or ballots destroyed by Helene, 12 county election offices in western North Carolina are currently closed due to flooding and other storm-related impacts. “There may be polling places affected by mudslides, there may be polling places inaccessible because of damaged roads, there may be polling places with trees that have fallen on them,” Brinson Bell said. There’s no saying, yet, how many of the people who will staff these polling places have been displaced, hurt, or killed by the storm.
Every county in North Carolina must offer at least 13 days of in-person early voting, and right now the state requires counties to open this process on October 17. Cohen said that many counties will struggle to meet that deadline, in particular smaller ones.
“The smaller counties just had one early voting location, and it’s normally at the board of elections office, which is usually downtown,” he said. “Because of the way these mountain towns were laid out in the 1700s or 1800s, they’re near rivers and creeks, so they’re prone to flooding.”
Cohen said he’s heard that the North Carolina legislature, which will convene next week, is considering some flexibility for early voting in affected counties, as well as resources to help these counties establish new voting sites and train up replacement poll workers. He believes the state can still manage a robust election if it provides proper support for local election boards — in other words, he said, “appropriate money.”
But the challenge that eclipses all other voting accessibility issues is the simple fact that people who have been affected by a historic and deadly flood event typically aren’t thinking about where they will cast their ballots — they’re focusing on locating their loved ones, mucking out their houses, finding new housing, filing insurance claims, and dozens of other priorities that trump voting.
The State Board of Elections in North Carolina has a website where residents can check their voter registration status, register a new permanent or temporary address, and monitor the progress of their mail-in ballot. But even if people wanted to find out where or how to vote, hundreds of thousands of customers in the state are currently without power, WiFi, and cell service.
For years, political scientists who study the effects of climate change on political turnout have warned about the inevitability of an event like Helene subverting a national election. “Hurricane season in the U.S. — between June and November every year — usually coincides with election season,” a recent report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, or IDEA, said. “The chances of hurricanes disrupting U.S. elections are ever-present and will increase as hurricanes become more common and intense due to climate change.”
Residents of Marshall, North Carolina, search for missing items from a nearby mechanics shop in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. The flooding from the storm has destroyed polling places across the western part of the state.
Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post via Getty Images
Prior to Helene, four elections were significantly disrupted by hurricanes in the 21st century: Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Hurricane Michael in 2018, and Hurricane Ian in 2022. The report by IDEA found that voter turnout can dip precipitously during these events.
“The biggest challenge that we see is not just technology failure, but a decrease in public confidence,” Vasu Mohan, a senior advisor at IDEA who has analyzed how disasters affect elections in dozens of countries, told Grist. “If you’re not prepared, then making last minute accommodations is extremely difficult.” However, Mohan’s research shows that it’s possible to conduct elections fairly after displacement events if communities are given the resources they need.
“I am very, very worried about how [the storm] will affect voting,” said Abby Werner, a pediatrician who lives in Charlotte, which did not sustain severe damage from the storm. Werner and her partner are Democrats, and make a point of voting in person. She fears the storm will suppress voter turnout. “In a series of worries it is an additional wave,” she said.
Brinson Bell’s office will likely face a flurry of lawsuits due to its handling of post-storm voting — it is already navigating a lawsuit, filed by Republican groups prior to the storm, over its handling of hundreds of thousands of voter registrations. But she said the COVID-19 pandemic and prior storms prepared the state for worst-case scenarios. “We held an incredibly successful election with record turnout during the COVID pandemic,” she said. “We’ve battled through hurricanes and tropical storms and still held safe and secure elections. And we will do everything in our power to do so again.”
North Carolina school systems in storm’s wake struggle to adapt
Storm damage, power outages, water issues, food shortages and closed roads keep many Western NC school systems closed and seeking way forward.
NC school systems in storm’s wake struggle to adapt is a story from Carolina Public Press, an award-winning independent newsroom. Our breakthrough journalism shines a light on the critical overlooked and under-reported issues facing North Carolina’s 10.4 million residents. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Across Appalachia, Photo ID Requirements Complicate Voting
When Amanda Saint went to vote in the 2020 election, she didn’t anticipate having any problems. For years, the 36-year-old nurse had been living and voting just outside of Huntsville, Alabama. But when Saint presented her driver’s license to the poll worker, they said it didn’t match her voter registration records.
The reason was simple: when Saint got married in 2011, she changed her name with the Social Security Administration. They listed her as “Amanda Lenore Saint,” using her middle name. But Saint’s driver’s license says her name is “Amanda Glasscock Saint,” using her maiden name.
Such discrepancies are relatively common. According to research from the University of Maryland, roughly 12% of Americans have a non-expired driver’s license that doesn’t list both their current address and name.
“So I go, ‘Yeah it’s my maiden name instead of my middle name, but I’m still the same person. You saw me at the primaries when I voted. I didn’t have a problem then,’” Saint said.
Alabama resident Amanda Saint holds a sticker showing she voted on Election Day. (Photo by Amanda Saint)
But poll workers still required Saint to vote provisionally. To this day, Saint doesn’t know if her provisional ballot was accepted.
“I felt extremely frustrated because I’m just trying to do my civic duty,” Saint said. “I do the state elections and the primaries because they are important, and to not be able to vote in the big one except with a provisional ballot which may or may not be accepted because of a technical error that I had never dealt with? I fumed about it for months afterward.”
Most Appalachian states require voters to present some form of ID at the polls. Within the region, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia have implemented new voter ID requirements since the 2020 election, according to USA Today. But all across Appalachia, photo ID requirements of all kinds — new and old, stricter and more lenient — are deeply intertwined with a complex web of legislation, lawsuits and logistical barriers.
The combined effect? A voting process that gets more complicated by the day.
‘Just a form of suppression’
Karen Pawloski has lived in southeastern Ohio for decades. But she didn’t begin working as deputy director of the Washington County Board of Elections until January 2020 — an experience she describes as “baptism by fire.”
Since Pawloski’s tenure began, Ohio has made significant changes to its voter ID requirements. Previously, voters could bring non-photographic documents — such as bank statements or utility bills — to the polls to prove their identities.
“We’re trying to do as much public relations as we can and educating the voters that they do have to bring in a picture ID now,” Pawloski said. “We’re using social media, and any time I interview with the local TV station here, we try to make sure that the voters know that…Voters that come and vote every election, they’re fine. But voters that only vote during presidential years, this is something new for them.”
Ohio now has some of the country’s most stringent photo ID requirements for voters. You can’t present a student ID from a public university at the polls. Or an out-of-state driver’s license. Or an expired driver’s license or passport. Since the state made these changes in 2023, more than 8,000 Ohioans have attempted to vote and had their ballots rejected because they didn’t present an acceptable ID.
But what counts as an “acceptable ID” varies greatly across Appalachia. Tennessee, Ohio, and South Carolina don’t allow student IDs from public universities. North Carolina does, but unlike Georgia or Mississippi, it doesn’t allow driver’s licenses that have been expired for more than a year — unless you’re 65 and older and your ID was unexpired on your 65th birthday.
And several Appalachian states don’t accept driver’s licenses from other states — including Tennessee. This requirement frequently confuses voters, according to Christie Campion, a former poll worker from Knoxville. Home to the state’s flagship university, the Appalachian city of just under 200,000 is full of college kids, including thousands of out-of-state students.
Campion remembers having to give a provisional ballot to a college student who came to vote with a Maryland driver’s license. Although she recommended the student obtain a Tennessee driver’s license, she recognized that the process of making it to the DMV is burdensome in itself.
“It’s a whole effort to go and get the ID, and then you go to try and get the ID, and they’re like ‘Oh you brought the wrong piece of paper. You have to come back later,’” Campion said. “I think being so restrictive on what counts as ID is just an attempt at suppression.”
Research from the University of Maryland found that younger voters, Black voters and Latino voters are much less likely to have a driver’s license with their current name and address — or any driver’s license at all. And studies show there is virtually no fraud taking place that could be prevented through photo ID requirements, said University of Kentucky law professor Josh Douglas via email.
“Overall, studies show that both sides embellish the debate a little,” said Douglas, who specializes in election law and advised on Kentucky’s voter ID legislation. “ID laws don't improve integrity, but the amount of disenfranchisement is typically somewhat small — though again, that depends on the specifics of the ID law and how strict they are.”
Kentucky’s photo ID requirements are relatively lenient, compared to other Appalachian states, but lawmakers recently tried making things more stringent. State senators passed a bill early this year that would’ve removed university-issued ID cards as a primary document for voter identification. The bill never made it out of House committees.
University IDs are also under scrutiny in nearby North Carolina. There, the state Republican Party and the Republican National Committee sued the State Board of Elections, seeking to prevent the use of digital university IDs from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A superior court judge initially denied their request, but just last Friday, a North Carolina appeals court blocked the use of the mobile UNC One Card.
The North Carolina Republican Party and the RNC have also recently filed several other lawsuits, including one seeking to revoke the voter registrations of more than 225,000 North Carolinians.
‘We want everybody to be as informed as they can’
North Carolina isn’t the only Appalachian state shaking things up at the last second. In late September, the Georgia State Election Board passed a controversial rule requiring all voting precincts to count ballots by hand on Election Day and ensure the tallies match machine counts. Back in Ohio, days after he suggested banning ballot drop boxes entirely, Secretary of State Frank LaRose issued a new directive in early September, limiting their use.
Now, if someone delivers an elderly or disabled voter’s ballot to a drop box, they have to physically enter the county board of elections office and sign a form. County board of elections officials have expressed concerns that this will create longer lines on Election Day.
But amid a flurry of proposed and enacted changes, multiple organizations working on turnout in Appalachian Ohio aren’t sharing their personal opinions regarding voter ID. They’re too busy sharing information with voters.
Members of Ohio University's Student Senate help the campus community register to vote. (Photo provided by Donald Theisen)
“I think our biggest concern when it went into effect was this education piece, ” said Adriane Mohlenkamp, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Athens County. “We were hoping to see some statewide wide-scale education efforts, and I know there's been some efforts around education, but it has not been maybe as robust as we would’ve hoped for.”
Lack of education is a big issue when it comes to voter ID. Fifty-five percent of people living in states with photo ID requirements either think they aren’t in place or don’t know if they are, according to research from the University of Maryland. Among voters aged 18 to 29, nearly 66 percent aren’t sure if photo ID is required — a particular concern in Athens County, home to more than 21,000 students attending Ohio University.
Over the past several months, Mohlenkamp and the rest of her team have registered plenty of college students — and voters of all ages. They’ve written letters to the editor, posted on Facebook, done interviews with local newspapers and distributed non-partisan voter information cards at libraries.
And on Ohio University’s campus, students are running their own initiatives to get their peers to the polls. In his capacity as the Student Senate’s Governmental Affairs Commissioner, sophomore Donald Theisen and his senators have spent hours passing out registration forms, preparing slideshows and participating in election-related events, including a recent debate watch party. Theisen wouldn't share his personal opinions on changes to Ohio election law. But he’s feeling pretty optimistic about Election Day.
“My job is to represent everybody on the campus regardless of how they may feel — whether they may lean left or right, whether they support or disavow the most recent changes to the law,” Theisen said. “Our job is to get everybody engaged in the process, trying to get it so that everybody can be registered and vote as easily as possible. We want everybody to be as informed as they can, and I think that the turnout at OU is gonna be pretty good.”
