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. 

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. 

“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.” 

The post Across Appalachia, Photo ID Requirements Complicate Voting appeared first on 100 Days in Appalachia.

Dozens of people were killed across multiple states this week as Hurricane Helene swept across parts of the Southeastern United States, bringing heavy rains and a 15-foot storm surge.

Coastal towns and cities in Florida were devastated when the Category 4 hurricane made landfall, but communities inland bore a similar brunt as the storm carved a path through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee.

“Turn around, don’t drown,” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper urged drivers in a press conference. 

At least 42 people have died from the storm. As of Friday, Florida reported seven deaths. Georgia, meanwhile, reported 15, and South Carolina, 17. In both of the latter states, most of the known fatalities were from falling trees and debris. North Carolina reported two deaths, including a car crash that killed a 4-year-old girl after a road flooded. 

Atlanta received 11.12 inches of rain in 48 hours, breaking its previous record of 9.59 inches in the same time period from 1886, according to Bill Murphey, Georgia’s state climatologist. More than 1 million Georgia residents also lost power in the storm, particularly in southern and eastern parts of the state. 

In western North Carolina, officials sounded alarms and went door-to-door evacuating residents south of the Lake Lure Dam in Rutherford County after the National Weather Service warned that a dam failure was “imminent.” Emergency crews also conducted more than 50 swift water rescues across the region, with one sheriff’s department warning it could not respond to all of the 911 calls due to flooded roads. The North Carolina Department of Transportation warned on social media that “all roads in Western NC should be considered closed” due to flooding from Helene.

In Tennessee, more than 50 people were stranded on the roof of a hospital due to heavy flooding and had to be rescued by helicopter. Residents of Cocke County in Tennessee were also asked to evacuate after reports that a separate dam could fail, although officials later said the dam failure had been a false alarm. In South Carolina, the National Weather Service said the storm was “one of the most significant weather events… in the modern era.”

The hurricane’s widespread flooding was worsened by climate change, scientists told Grist. Hurricane Helene was an unusually large storm with an expansive reach. After forming in the Caribbean, it traveled over extremely warm ocean waters in the Gulf of Mexico that enabled the storm to intensify more quickly than it may have otherwise. In fact, Helene went from a relatively weak tropical storm to a Category 4 in just two days. Warmer air also holds more moisture, supercharging the storm’s water content and leading to more rapid rainfall and intense flooding. 

“When that enhanced moisture comes up and hits terrain like the Appalachian Mountains,” said University of Hawaiʻi meteorology professor Steve Businger, “it results in very, very high rainfall rates, exceptionally high rainfall rates and that unfortunately results in a lot of flash flooding.”

Shel Winkley, a meteorologist at the scientific group Climate Central, said research has shown that the Gulf’s current extra-warm ocean temperatures were ​​made up to 500 times more likely with climate change. “One of the things that we’re seeing with these big storms, especially as they seem to become more frequent, is that they’re no longer natural disasters, but that they’re unnatural disasters,” Winkley said. “It’s not just a normal weather system anymore.” 

Hurricanes are naturally occuring, of course, but the conditions that led to Helene’s severity — its rapid intensification and heavy rainfall — were partially driven by warmer ocean and atmospheric temperatures from the burning of fossil fuels. “There is a fingerprint of climate change in that process,” Winkley said. 

“This summer was record warm globally and there was a record amount of water vapor in the global atmosphere,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, or UCLA. Both factors contributed to what the Southeastern U.S. experienced this week. “This is one of the more significant flood events in the U.S. in recent memory.”  

Initial estimates for the storm’s damage to homes, businesses, and infrastructure range between $15 billion and $26 billion, the New York Times reported. Businger said he expects the enormous loss to fuel more conversations about the precarity of the existing property insurance system. “The cost to society is becoming extravagant,” he said.

Scientists noted that the fact that the storm’s winds increased by 55 miles per hour in the 24 hours before it made landfall also made it deadlier.

“It was so strong and moving so fast it just didn’t have time to weaken very much before it made it far inland,” Swain said. Rapid intensification is particularly dangerous, he said, because people often make decisions on how to prepare for storms and whether or not to evacuate based on how bad they appear to be initially. 

“It was one of the faster intensifying storms on record,” Swain said. “This is not a fluke. We should expect to see more rapidly intensifying hurricanes in a warming climate.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline After battering coastal towns, Hurricane Helene causes deadly flooding across five states on Sep 27, 2024.

This story is the first in a series of travel-based dispatches from rural America. Over the next few months, Oklahoma-based journalist Kristi Eaton will travel throughout rural America in search of hidden gems. From public art festivals that morph small downtown corridors into art masterpieces, to historic architecture restored into new community hubs, Eaton will get to know the people, events and organizations that are revitalizing rural and small town communities across the country, transforming their sense of place—and ours—in the process.

LAKE CITY, S.C. – Anna Burrows refers to the last week in April and the first week of May as Christmas.

For the last decade, Burrows has owned Seven Boutique, a clothing and accessories store along Main Street in rural Lake City, South Carolina. She also owns Shade Tree Outfitters, a men’s clothing store next door.

Every spring for the last 12 years, this community of 6,000 about 60 miles from Myrtle Beach doubles in population, drawing in visitors near and far to see art from across the South as part of ArtFields, a festival and competition that has transformed this historical agriculture community into an arts destination.

“It’s phenomenal for us as far as business goes,” says Burrows.

Though Burrows doesn’t have an exact dollar amount for impact, she says this year, like many previous years, has seen a substantial increase in business. At her boutique, she says the art she picked this year to host in her business venue is “the talk of the town.”

In 2024, there were more than 450 pieces of adult artworks and 300 junior pieces of art in 50 venues, many of them local businesses, says Roberta Burns, marketing manager for ArtFields.

“It’s really fully transformed the town,” Burns says. “And I would say when people say what’s the biggest change, it’s always the town. But I think there’s some things that have stayed the same. One is the prizes and the commitment to showcasing Southern art.”

Artists compete for more than $100,000 in prizes, including People’s Choice awards voted on by event attendees. There is a jury panel for the Grand Prize, Second Place, and Merit Awards. There are two People’s Choice prizes, one for 2D and 3D artworks, that are voted on by the public. (Check out this year’s winners.)

“I think what probably surprises people more than anything else, because this is a small rural town and an agricultural region which people don’t normally associate with cutting edge contemporary anything, much less art,” says Harry Lesesne, president and CEO of The Darla Moore Foundation, which founded and funds ArtFields from its $500 million endowment.

The foundation earmarked $670,000 to the Lake City Creative Alliance in 2022 to “support a culturally-rich environment in [the] South Carolina region.” Moore’s foundation also runs a Botanical Garden, where she currently lives.

“But this community has really taken to [it], and they’re welcoming. Welcoming to people of all kinds of shapes, sizes, looks,” says Lesesne.

Darla Moore was born in Lake City before becoming president and partner of the private investment firm Rainwater Inc., and, in 1997, she was the first woman to be profiled on the cover of Fortune magazine. By 2012, she had accumulated an estimated $2.3 billion fortune. As a philanthropist, she has donated to a variety of causes, including education, land conservation, medical research and art. The business school at her alma mater, the University of South Carolina, is named for her.

“The biggest spending element [for the foundation] is for the city, by far,” Lesesne says. “It’s about supporting and sustaining economic growth here …When you walk around town, you will see what the arts are doing for the economic sustainability of the town.”

Seventy percent of the town’s residents identify as Black. More than 22% of residents live in poverty as of 2023, according to figures from the U.S. Census.

Carla Angus, a founding team member of ArtFields, recalls in a podcast about the festival what Lake City was like before the festival started.

Like many rural areas, there were very few businesses, says Angus: “a lot of storefronts that were empty … not a lot of action, not a lot going on.” For Angus, Lake City’s transformation has been “mind-blowing.” “Downtown is now a place where people go to hang out, people go to eat, people go to do things. And I really do believe with the power of art and what happened through ArtFields made that difference in our downtown.”

From boutiques to restaurants and bars and photography studios and more, Lake City is filled with small businesses.

“It’s all a strategy created around developing economic sustainability,” Lesesne says. “[It’s] giving people a reason to come here, stay, spend money, live their lives, be prosperous and productive citizens.”

In the last few years, artists have started moving to Lake City, living here year-round and producing art for themselves and others.

Roger Halligan has been a professional sculptor since the 1970s. He and his wife, fellow artist Jan Chenoweth, moved to Lake City from Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 2019. The couple wanted to be closer to the family and were intrigued by the tiny community. They bought a building and turned it into studio space and gallery space.

“It’s fun to see the transition,” he says of the community. “And what’s happening and who moves in.”

Herman A. Keith is a muralist who was born in South Carolina. He along with others have created large-scale public works of art seen in downtown.

Keith says there are hundreds of small communities dotting the state that were once similar to Lake City.

“[They are] almost identical, depended on the same crops, historically … on the same type of economy,” he says. “Lake City had the courage to use art as an economic driver. So even though Lake City might not have towering skyscrapers, it might not have a thousand-foot waterfall, but it uses art to stimulate the economy.”

Burns, the marketing manager for ArtFields, says there is an effort to make Lake City a year-round art destination. With galleries, new studio space and public programming, Lake City looks to attract artists like Halligan and Keith as well as visitors to the area.

“People are coming to Lake City just for the art,” she says.

The post How a South Carolina Town Transformed into a Southeastern Arts Hub appeared first on Barn Raiser.

When Brendalyn King and her partner, Osei Doyle, quit their jobs and left Brooklyn, New York, in 2020 to buy land, they had high hopes of entering the growing industrial hemp industry.  They moved to Salem, Illinois, to farm on a family friend’s land until they were able to buy the property. However, they never […]

The post Black Farmers Looked to Cash In on the CBD Industry. Now, Hemp Is in Decline. appeared first on Capital B.