As people across the country deal with the aftermath of devastating storms, voting may be the last thing on their minds.
But take it from someone who has been in this situation before: people will still come out to vote.
“Many of the safety nets that are in place now to allow people to vote in the presidential election did not exist in 2012,” said Kim Guadagno, the former lieutenant governor and secretary of state of New Jersey, who oversaw the election when Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012. “Early voting was almost unheard of. Mail-in ballots were rarely used. Now everyone votes in a very different way, and there is no reason not to vote.”
That 2012 storm devastated communities in New Jersey and New York just days before Election Day — timing that represented a virtually unprecedented crisis. And while some of the solutions Guadagno and other local election officials adopted — such as allowing some voters to return their ballots by mail — were hotly debated even then, they remain critical case studies in how to protect voting rights and at the same time safety and trust in society can be balanced. the system after natural disasters.
Now election officials in states like Florida, Georgia and North Carolina will look at how Guadagno and others handled Sandy 12 years ago as they prepare for this year’s elections. Officials now face all the usual challenges that come with organizing elections — with the added hurdles of damage to physical infrastructure, voter displacement and increased misinformation after back-to-back hurricanes hit the South.
And when election officials then got it done, Guadagno expressed optimism that the affected areas will still be able to facilitate the voting process.
POLITICO spoke with Guadagno about how elections are affected by natural disasters.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What was your biggest lesson from overseeing the 2012 election after Sandy?
The biggest lesson was: relationships are important. What do I mean by that? In the two years before Sandy appointed us as Secretary of State and Chief of Elections, I met regularly with all voting rights advocates and representatives of the major political parties. And so we had not just a working relationship, but a trusting relationship that was built over those two years. Now it wouldn’t happen today, I don’t think on any level, but because we had that relationship, I was able to pick up the phone in the early morning hours leading up to the election and basically have a conversation with anyone who said, ‘Let’s get this election pass and sue me later,” realizing that normally they would have tried to stop, delay, or challenge the election midway. Let’s get through this election, given that we were only eight days away from a presidential election, and then we can all sue each other afterwards, and that’s what they agreed to. … Relationships are important, and you can’t fix them twenty days before a disaster. You need to get started on it right away.
Do you think the recent and upcoming storms across the country will impact turnout? Did that happen in 2012?
I think we’re far enough away from the presidential election, if there isn’t another hurricane, that we can fix it enough so that it doesn’t affect turnout. But I did look at the turnout: in 2008 it was 72 percent, but that was the year we elected the first black president of the United States, so the turnout was unusually high anyway. In 2012, it dropped to 66.8 percent in terms of turnout in New Jersey, and it went back up to 68.1 percent in terms of turnout in 2016. … That’s really only a change from ’12 to ’16 of about 2 percent, and if you look at the national turnout in 2012, the year of Sandy, it was also a little bit low, so there’s not a big jump. Was there a difference? Yes. Was it because of Sandy? I can’t think of any other factor that would have played a 2 percent role in the turnout from ’12 to ’16. So I think so, but I think it was also a national trend at the time.
How do you encourage voters to vote when people are trying to get their lives back in order after a hurricane?
The biggest surprise for us on the morning of the presidential election was how many people lined up to vote, how many people insisted on exercising their right to vote. How many people said, “Okay, I can’t control the weather, I can’t control the electricity, I can’t control the tides, but I can control who is going to be the next president of the United States.” And so what happened in 2012 in the voting precincts that were literally wiped out is that the municipal and county clerks were inundated with requests for ballots, requests for mail-in ballots, requests for where to vote. I think the surprise of 2012 was that people really wanted to vote in the districts that had been destroyed. And that’s quite uplifting and hopeful, if you ask me.
We see a lot of misinformation here about the hurricane and voting. What impact do you think that will have?
I think the municipal secretaries should now move forward on this. … I’ll never forget a senator calling me and asking why we ordered the polls to be open after 8 p.m. and I said to him, ‘Show me where in the Constitution it says I have to close the polls. polling stations at eight o’clock.’ And then he complained about mail-in voting, and I said, “Show me in the Constitution where it says you can’t vote by mail.” Much of this is difficult to manipulate. … In 2012 you could easily hack into an email, but there was a backstop to it, there was security to it. You then had to mail that vote to the county clerk, who then had to match it to the email – after the election, but still had to do it. So there were checks and balances, there was security. And I think that as election officials stepped up – as they were before the election, if you look at what was going on in the swing states, Georgia and North Carolina – they made sure and made sure that people had the right to vote. So I think it’s just a matter of preventing misinformation. It’s certainly a bigger scale today than it was in 2012, but I think they will.
As someone who has experienced this during a presidential election year, do you think it is helpful or painful when politicians come to disaster-stricken areas as part of their campaign?
It certainly should not be part of campaigns. … I prefer to believe that people are empathetic and that they care, and that I know when we visited the decimated places in Sandy, I never saw people crying as much as they did. I’ve never seen Chris Christie cry and I saw him cry because of the stories we saw and the impact we saw. I know that when President Obama came here, it was important for everyone to know that the President of the United States had not let them down. And I know when Vice President Biden came to the area at the time, the same thing happened. … People felt better seeing that there were people across the country who cared. So yes, it slows down some responders, but I don’t think anyone goes right away. I think they waited enough time for people to at least be safe. There’s a lot that goes into having a president in your state, in your county, in your city, but I think it’s good for morale.
A version of this story first appeared in POLITICO Pro’s Morning Score newsletter. Sign up for POLITICO Pro.
