What Happens to Voting When There’s a Natural Disaster
For people displaced by hurricanes and wildfires in the months leading up to the election, voting can be difficult, if not impossible.
Displaced voters walk through debris to vote in a new polling location after their regular polling place was damaged by Hurricane Michael at Shell Point Beach in Wakulla Country, Florida on November 6, 2018.
Photographer: Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images North AmericaIf 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.