National Guardsmen from around the country, including new Jersey, continue to support hurricane relief efforts in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and elsewhere.

Clearing downed trees, reopening flooded roads, and getting the lights back on for millions of people.

Government experts say the damage is still being added up, but they expect losses to surpass $50 billion each.

What's worse, about 95% of the damage in the case of Hurricane Helene affected people who were uninsured, putting those victims in a real financial hole.

The devastation from the storms has some election officials concerned it may impact turnout on Election Day, either, because voting just isn't simply top of mind, or because residents in those states won't have access.

New Jersey's former lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno, has been in this situation before.

She oversaw elections when Superstorm Sandy hit in 2012, which left 38 people dead.

Close to 350,000 homeless and more than 2 million without power.

State officials scrambled to pull off voting at the time, creating one of the very first playbooks for modern day elections in the wake of a natural disaster.

Kim Guadagno joins me now.

Thanks so much for coming on the show.

I mean, you know well how difficult it was to balance, the right to vote and protecting that right to vote while also making sure that folks had trust in the system.

What was your biggest challenge in the wake of Sandy on that election day?

Well, leading up to the election day, it was preparing for it, getting as many people as possible to vote in advance.

And you have to remember, this is 2012.

Early voting was not necessarily the the way the designer.

It is now.

It's not it's not that common.

It was very controversial back in 2012.

So we opened up the polls.

We had the clerks open longer.

We had a really good working relationship with all of the parties involved in the presidential and local elections, leading up to Sandy.

And then after Sandy, we had 3000 polling districts just disappear.

Yeah.

So we had to try to put those together as quickly as possible to there was a lot of challenges.

It wasn't so much as trust as it is today in terms of, the legality of voting and too many people voting as it was making sure people had access to the polls at the time.

Yeah.

That's right.

I mean, it was just the sheer fact that people couldn't get there.

The roads weren't open, power wasn't necessarily on.

Now it's more a question of folks are concerned whether their votes will be counted, whether there will be fraud involved.

How have any of these states that have been impacted reached out to you, or anyone in the in the administration for advice?

You know, no, I haven't seen it.

There was a lot of reports on voting right after Sandy.

There's a lot of paper out there available.

Congress did an investigation.

The League of Women Voters did an investigation just to find out how we did it and how we could do it better in the future.

So I'm curious, you know, all the talk is about whether or not it'll affect turnout.

Do you recall did it affect turnout in new Jersey?

We looked at it very closely.

You know, President Obama was first elected with 72% of the vote, in, 2008.

Our election was 2012, which was the next time he was on the ballot.

We went down from 72% to 66%.

But then we went back up the following presidential election to 68.

So I think the record turnout in 2008 was because it was President Obama, the first black president.

Yeah, I think it was a little lower in 2012, but I think that was because it was a little lower across the country.

And then it was at 68, there was only 66 or 68%.

That's really not a big difference in terms of the presidential vote.

So I don't think it had a large impact.

I think to the extent there was a lower turnout, it was probably due to Sandy, but we did everything we possibly could to make sure people had a chance to to exercise their franchise, I always say.

Yeah.

I mean, and I wonder too, does it somewhat motivate folks to go out to the polls even more once they're faced with a disaster like that and their life upended?

You know, everybody always asks, what happened with the voting?

Did they did people stay home because they were in shelters?

I think people went out deliberately because they were in shelters.

The only thing they could control at that time was their ability to exercise their right to vote.

They couldn't control the weather.

They couldn't control the electricity.

They couldn't control where they were at the times, but they could control who was going to be the next president of the United States.

And that's why I think we had a record number of votes.

We had polling places completely slammed with people trying to trying to get in there and strike a ballot.

So what would you say then, now, a decade plus later, was your biggest takeaway, about getting an election underway?

With circumstances like that?

Well, we were only a week out if if, if if Helene had had stricken, had hit a little earlier, I think we'd be in bad shape right now because people don't trust each other.

We had a very good relationship with all of the major parties and all of the major voting advocates.

So I had been meeting with them on a quarterly basis, as the secretary of state.

So it was a cell phone call, literally, 4 a.m. in the morning, the day of the election.

We were still down a little bit with districts.

And I said, look, I know you're going to all sue me.

Can you just wait until after the votes are all in so that we get through this election?

And then you go back and examine if there was any problems and any, fraud in any way.

And then we'll go through the exercise of a lawsuit.

And they agreed to that.

The not only did they agree to it, but I did not get Sue.

The only, group that sued me was the, the law center.

And the Republicans were not happy with extended voting days, extended voting hours, voting by email.

I got a lot of yelling at from my own party, and I regularly said, show me in the Constitution where it says, we can't do this, right, because right now this is a disaster, and we're going to get through it, and we're going to let people vote and challenge them later on.

Yeah, the email especially, that ruffled a lot of feathers.

Former Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno, thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me.