We are less than a month away from Election Day as the hard-hit residents in the western part of North Carolina and the northern part of Georgia recover from the ravages of Hurricane Helene. What should officials in those states, and possibly others, be doing to protect their affected citizens’ right to vote?

North Carolina alone has almost 7.7 million registered voters, and about one-fifth of them, over 1.5 million, live in areas devastated by the storm. More than 800,000 people voted in the 53 affected counties in Georgia in 2020, about one-sixth of the state’s votes.