The Explained today podcast takes a deep dive into the key issues of the 2024 election through the lens of seven battleground states. We’ve heard from voters in Georgia, Pennsylvania, ArizonaAnd Wisconsin so far; This week we’ll get started North Carolinawhere a storm last month devastated the state — and part of its election infrastructure.

North Carolina officials are preparing for an election like no other in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. The storm disrupted North Carolinians’ voting infrastructure — washing away absentee ballots, disrupting postal service and destroying polling places — and could affect what Election Day looks like in two weeks.

The state is expected to be close — former President Donald Trump won by just 1.3 percentage points in 2020, and current polling averages indicate an even tighter race this year — and all eyes are on the mountains, which will bear the brunt had from the hurricane.

While some parts of life are returning to normal after Hurricane Helene flooded last month — power has returned, internet service has been restored — many people in the western part of the state still don’t have drinking water in their homes.

With so many people displaced or making repairs, experts have raised concerns about low voter turnout.

“The question will be: If you have to avoid swallowing water while showering, how important will voting be to you?” Steve Harrison, a political reporter at NPR affiliate station WFAE, told us Explained today host Sean Rameswaram.

In an effort to ensure the election runs as normally as possible, local election officials have been given permission to move polling places and adjust hours. The state also updated its rules for absentee voters, allowing them to return their completed ballots to counties other than their own, as previously required, although the state failed to reinstate a three-day grace period for returns counting ballots.

Even with the added flexibility, actually communicating the changes to voters in affected areas remains a challenge. “Information is hard to come by because the internet is down, cell service is down, and everything is changing day to day,” said Buncombe County resident Kaitlyn Leaf. “Sometimes from hour to hour.” (Leaf is married to a Vox Media employee, sound engineer Patrick Boyd.)

So far, officials’ efforts to create more flexibility for voters appear to be paying off: The state set a turnout record on the first day of early voting, which began in all 100 counties on Oct. 17, though it is unclear how many of those votes were cast in the affected areas.

According to Harrison’s analysis, these voters could have an outsized influence on the outcome of the national election. Of the 15 counties hardest hit by Helene, Biden won only two in 2020: Buncombe, home to the liberal city of Asheville, and Watauga, home to Appalachian State University. The rest? Trump won by wide margins.

Polling averages show the 2024 presidential race in North Carolina to be a dead heat, meaning any drop in turnout in those counties could ultimately hurt the former president’s chances.

“If it’s incredibly close, I don’t think we’ll hear the last of Helene,” Harrison said Explained today.

North Carolina isn’t the only state that could face obstacles on Election Day, though the impact of Hurricane Helene makes the situation unique. Extremely thin margins and wrinkles in vote-counting rules in other battleground states could delay the full outcome of the election after Nov. 5.

With polls showing several battleground states running neck and neck between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, election officials are warning they may need to count a larger share of ballots before media organizations can reliably make their predictions, resulting in a multi-day process that is comparable until 2020.

Many states are also dealing with last-minute efforts to purge voter rolls and change election rules. But at least two states are likely to experience delays because their election rules have remained the same.

In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, election officials are not allowed to process ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day. In other states with mail-in ballots, workers can prepare ballots for counting earlier — by verifying signatures, flattening the ballots — to streamline vote counting on Election Day. The later start of election workers in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania could result in delayed calls this year, especially if the race yields only a few thousand votes.

Both state legislatures considered updating their rules after the 2020 election, but conspiracy theories and partisan gridlock ultimately killed bills that would have done so.

“It’s a real frustration,” Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt told CNN in September. “(The proposed legislation) does not benefit any candidate. It does not benefit any party. It can only be good for the public who will know the results sooner, and for our election officials, who would otherwise not have to work day and night.”

As we’ve seen in 2020, any delay between Election Day and the final results leaves plenty of room for conspiracy theories — something Trump will likely take full advantage of. In 2020, Trump reported on “surprise ballots” in Milwaukee after a jump in Biden votes when the city reported all of its absentee ballots at the same time. (He still falsely claims he won Wisconsin in 2020.)

CNN political correspondent Sara Murray says voters should ignore conspiracy theories if there is a longer wait for results in 2024. “The fact that this lasts for a few days does not mean that there is some kind of large-scale voter fraud. on,” she said Explained today. “It doesn’t mean machines flipping votes. It doesn’t mean people are throwing away ballots. It just means election workers are still counting votes.”