Bloomberg: What Happens to Voting When There’s a Natural Disaster

If all goes as planned, two coach buses and two vans will be parked in front of the Marriott hotel in downtown New Orleans on the morning of Tuesday, Nov. 3. They’ll make the three-hour trip to the civic center in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where the roughly 150 people onboard — all of whom were displaced by recent hurricanes — can cast their ballots, before heading back to the hotel that same day.

Thaddeus Chenier knows that’s only a drop in the bucket of the thousands of Lake Charles residents who were forced out of their homes by Hurricanes Laura and Delta this summer, and are staying in New Orleans-area hotels arranged by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But as head of Operation Unite Incorporated, a community advocacy group of seven volunteers founded just days ago, Chenier says he’ll be glad to have pulled this off. …

On the West Coast, entire communities have had to evacuate to shelters and other parts of their states in California, Oregon and Colorado due to unprecedented wildfires. In some cases, Covid-19 adds an extra layer of complexity as traditional shelters were closed.

States have set up websites to inform displaced residents about how to vote, and a few have even enacted emergency plans. Many advise residents to vote absentee, and to have ballots sent to their temporary homes, or if voting in person, to be aware of polling location changes. But voting rights groups say that kind of pertinent information doesn’t always make it to those who need it most.  …

In Oregon, where an active wildfire season has destroyed at least 4,000 homes, election officials have been reaching out to individuals whose mail the U.S. Postal Service says is undeliverable. The civic engagement group Common Cause Oregon, meanwhile, has launched a massive texting campaign in the eight most affected counties, sending out voting information and the number to their voting hotline, and trying to catch anybody who may have fallen through the cracks. Executive Director Kate Titus says they’ve reached some 300,000 people.

“One of the reasons we decided to reach out by text is because we recognize that the people we reach could have a lot going on,” she says. In fact, all the experts that Bloomberg CityLab spoke to emphasize that for many displaced residents who’ve temporarily or permanently lost their homes, voting may be the last thing on their minds.