Update: The North Carolina Board of Elections voted yesterday unanimously to conduct a special election in the Ninth Congressional District. A key witness, Lisa Britt, testified she was paid to collect absentee ballots. Some of the ballots were completed by her in favor of the Repugnant--an admission of vote tampering. The Board chairman said the "corruption" and "absolute mess" surrounding the submission of absentee ballots tainted the entire election. Mark Harris (R) dropped out of the race today.
{22.02.2019} Repugnants spend a great deal of time accusing their opposition of vote fraud and to passing all kinds of restrictive voting laws in the name of preventing vote fraud, but actually intended to cut down the size of the vote turn out for the other side. Mark Harris (R), an evangelical minister and candidate for the House, supposedly won the congressional election in North Carolina by just 905 votes according to unofficial returns, but the state Board of Elections refused to certify the election, and held its fourth day of hearings today in order to get to the bottom of what may be the largest actual cases of vote fraud in modern US history.
A GOP operative for the Harris campaign is alleged to have paid people to tamper with absentee ballots in at least two counties that comprise the 9th Congressional district in the southern part of the state The campaign hired McCrea Dowless despite a history of vote tampering allegations stretching back years. The candidate claimed he knew nothing of the operative's background. Yesterday, Harris' son contradicted that story testifying that he warned his father by phone and email that Dowless was "shady". Harris' son is now an assistant US Attorney in Raleigh. He also in formed campaign chairman Andy Yates of his concerns. Yates' political consulting firm, "Red Dome Group" paid Dowless for his work on behalf of the campaign. Yates described in testimonyan arrangement in which there was little oversight or accountability for Dowless’ activities. Dowless is accused of hiring a team of workers to illegally collect, sign, forge, and turn in ballots. It is a felony in North Carolina to submit absentee ballots on behalf of a voter.
Adding to the suspicious evidence is a text message to a local judge in which Harris laments about not having the assistance of "the guy" who organized a absentee ballot "project" in Johnson County that proved instrumental in Harris' previous defeat for the 9th District seat. The Board sternly chastised Harris for his belated release of this information after having represented that all relevant communications had been provided. Members of the Board called the last minute disclosure, "a disgrace". The election is the last undecided contest in the 2016 cycle.