Despite widespread damage from Helene, all six Watauga County polling sites will be open as early voting begins Thursday, but changes have been made due to ongoing recovery efforts.
Election officials have limited the hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. but expanded dates to include weekends during the early voting period, which ends at 3 p.m. November 2.
Dalton George, a Boone Town Council member and a longtime advocate for ballot access, says there’s still a lot of private bridge outages and damaged roads, so from a safety standpoint it makes sense to reduce voting to peak daylight hours. But there are downsides.
“That could create a situation in which there are people that would have voted, that will either be unable to because of access or be unwilling because of the pressure on our limited infrastructure during those nine-to-five hours,” he says.
George says he’s particularly worried about access in the western part of Watauga County. But he says he’s optimistic that people who want to vote will have a chance to do so by election day.