No, Hurricane Helene Does Not Justify Giving North Carolina’s Electoral Votes to Trump
With recovery efforts from widespread flooding ongoing across much of western North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene, a Republican congressman has suggested that it “makes a lot of sense” to effectively cancel the presidential election in the state and declare Donald Trump the winner.
It doesn’t, and the state Legislature does not actually have that power.
Politico reports that Rep. Andy Harris (R–Md.) said Thursday that North Carolina state lawmakers should be prepared to override the will of the voters to avoid disenfranchising voters in flood-stricken areas who might have been unable to cast a ballot.
“It looks like just a power play,” Harris said, according to a recording posted to X by Ivan Raiklin, a Trump supporter who has advocated for state lawmakers to seize power over the awarding of electoral votes. “In North Carolina, it’s legitimate. There are a lot of people that aren’t going to get to vote and it may make the difference in that state.”
Elsewhere in the same video, Harris says the move would be legitimate because “you know what that vote probably would have been.”
Uh, no, you don’t. And it looks like a power play because that’s exactly what it would be.
There are any number of reasons why someone might not cast a ballot on Election Day (or via early and absentee voting processes, both of which are ongoing in the parts of North Carolina wrecked by Hurricane Helene). Some people choose not to vote. Others might simply never get around to it. Rainy weather depresses turnout. Rarely, a major natural disaster might strike just before an election.
That doesn’t matter. When someone fails to cast a ballot, they are not granting state lawmakers the power to decide how “that vote probably would have” gone, as Harris is suggesting here. You can’t count votes that don’t exist, period.
This is such a basic principle of
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