Trump demands emergency voter changes in hurricane-ravaged NC after years of slamming them

Former President Donald Trump is making an abrupt about-face, and demanding last-minute emergency changes to the voting system in North Carolina, in the aftermath of the disaster caused by Hurricane Helene.

According to Politico's Meredith McGraw, the Trump campaign called for several voter access expansions in western North Carolina, including countywide early voting, expanded vote-by-mail procedures, expanded early in-person voting hours, expanded Sunday voting, and waiving the residency requirement for poll workers.

A number of emergency voting expansions have already been approved in 13 affected counties. But the Republican Party leadership, including Trump's daughter-in-law Lara, are threatening to file lawsuits to force even more expansions of voting access.

The calls represent a sharp turn from years of Trump and the GOP attacking pandemic-era emergency voting access expansions, particularly to mail-in voting, which they claimed was illegal and an effort to rig the election — all of which continues to this day to hurt GOP efforts to get more voters to cast ballots by mail.

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“We have got three ways to vote now: Early voting, vote by mail and voting on Election Day," Trump's running mate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) said at a recent North Carolina rally. "And look, I am a firm believer that we ought to have Election Day in this country and not election season, but we are where we are. So we’ve got to take advantage of all these pathways to vote.”

One factor in the campaign's demand to expand voter access might be that although Asheville, the largest city in western North Carolina, is a Democratic stronghold, most of the surrounding areas are heavily pro-Trump.

The former president has leveled baseless accusations that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, has withheld resources from Republican-leaning areas in hurricane relief efforts. He has also claimed that the Biden administration has falsely raided FEMA funds to pay for shelter for migrants.