Trump Counties Are Down

Not willing to be happy about about this.

There may be over 1,000 dead including children and the very elderly.

The storm struck well across political lines, heavily damaging Asheville, NC, a major liberal center.

Not sure what the article is postulating.

me neither, it's terrible. I know rural southerners who would have voted for harris (and likely already did)

R2, early voting has yet to start in either Georgia or North Carolina.

It’s the hand of God.

[quote]Not sure what the article is postulating.

The first two paragraphs make it clear and it only gets more detailed from there:

[quote]Hurricane Helene hit especially hard in heavily Republican areas of Georgia and North Carolina — a fact that could work to Donald Trump’s disadvantage in the two swing states.

[quote]Research has shown that major disasters can influence both voter turnout and voter preference. And Helene has pushed this contest into novel territory: It’s the first catastrophic event in U.S. history to hit two critical swing states within six weeks of a presidential election, based on a POLITICO’s E&E News analysis of data compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Then it delves into Trump's past performance in the areas hardest hit and mentions some Democratic strongholds that were also devastated. It's a double-edged sword for Republican voting officials because they'd normally do whatever they could to depress turnout in blue areas. It's much harder to do that this time around without costing themselves red votes.

Yeah, well, unfortunately the storm also took out a lot of the election infrastructure in the States that were hit. Officials are scrambling to repair or replace it, but it gives Trump a new reason to claim the election is rigged.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, OP.

Ignore R1. He's a troll I've blocked for over a year and rarely adds anything of value to the conversation.

He's already preparing an election interference excuse for when he loses by claiming Biden is ignoring the region so Trump voters will be disenfranchised. Getting his base all riled up with disinformation for a repeat of 2020.

Here's why this is interesting. The majority of the people impacted by Helene are Republikkkan/MAGA. Yes, Asheville, a blue bubble in a red state, was hit, but it is an urban center with infrastructure that can handle a not-so-last minute change in voting location/protocol. Rural counties are not equipped to deal with the same issues. The Republikkkans in the state legislature would [italic]love[/italic] to change the rules at the last minute to benefit the two rural counties/MAGA strongholds that were impacted... but it would benefit Asheville more than the rural counties, so the legislature is stuck in a heads you win/tails we lose position.

And it is well deserved. State officials would be much better prepared to deal with this problem (and a problem that is only going to get worse as the "hoax" of global warming grows and threatens even more in the south east) if they'd done everything they could to build out voting infrastructure during Covid.. But Republikkkans know two things: when more people vote, Democrats win; and making it harder to vote in rural areas only works to a point, after which their own voter participation rate falls off.

To wit, they could have implemented vote-by-mail across the state in 2020. It's the safest, most secure (in terms of voter integrity) method, and voter participation rates skyrocket. But that means that the Republikkkans would actually have to work for the public's vote and not just suppress Democratic turnout. They could have created greater in-person voting infrastructure and expanded early voting, but that would make it easier for Democrats to vote, too. So, they continued to play the game of prohibiting vote by mail, reducing polling places, and tightening early vote periods, and now it has come back to bite them in the ass, hard.

They've made their own bed and now must lay in it. God has spoken, and clearly wants Kamala to carry NC and GA.

And Politico's right-wing German owners (Axel Springer) are not happy about it, at all. Womp womp.

I don't really mind. I'm high and dry in NYC so none of this affects me, but Donald Trump getting reelected certainly would, so really this is fine. They should have planned ahead. I mean shit happens, deal with it, right?

Oh look. Another Trump thread.

I don't care how they voted or would have voted, drowning or dying in the mud is horrible.