“The number of ballots in question wouldn’t change the outcome of this election.” ‘No reason to doubt the legitimacy of the outcome,’ Harris says as he sues to be seated https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article223873040.html While winners of 2018 House races were being sworn into a new Congress in Washington on Thursday, Republican Mark Harris met with staff from the North Carolina state board of elections in Raleigh. Harris and two attorneys met with state board Executive Director Kim Westbrook Strach and Chief Investigator Joan Fleming for nearly two hours Thursday morning, the board said in a news release. Earlier in the day, Harris filed a motion with the Wake County Superior Court urging the court to compel the board to certify his election. Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes, according to unofficial results, in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, which stretches from Charlotte to Fayetteville along the South Carolina border. But the state board twice declined to certify his election, citing voting irregularities and possible absentee ballot fraud in Bladen and Robeson counties. The nine-member board has been declared unconstitutional and dissolved. And no new board will take shape until the end of January. “We believe that, again, that I should be certified,” he said. “We don’t believe that the number of ballots in question would change the outcome of this election.” David Freedman, Harris’ attorney, said his client should be in Washington being sworn in with members of the new Congress. “We think there should be no reason to doubt the legitimacy of the outcome,” Harris said. (Text of lawsuit (62 pages), video and links at above url)
Now the clowns in Congress are getting involved... it will be a complete three ring circus. House Democrats prepare to probe disputed North Carolina election The investigations could be another avenue to an eventual special election in North Carolina's 9th District. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/05/north-carolina-election-house-democrats-1082561 House Democrats are preparing to launch their own investigations into the disputed congressional election in North Carolina, where Republican Mark Harris’ campaign is facing fraud allegations and the state elections board had refused to certify the results. Harris’ campaign has sued in state court to be seated in Congress, despite an ongoing investigation by the elections board that suffered a setback when the board was dissolved at the end of 2018. Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes in the unofficial vote count, but voters and election workers have filed numerous affidavits detailing irregularities during the election, including reports that McCrae Dowless, a subcontractor for Harris’ campaign consultants, ran an operation that collected and marked voters’ absentee ballots. The House Democratic investigations could pave the way for a new election in the district, even if the court orders the board of elections to certify Harris as the winner instead of the board ordering a re-vote itself. The House Administration Committee, now controlled by Democrats, has the authority to call for another election after investigating the 2018 results. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), who is slated to chair an election-focused subcommittee of the House Administration Committee, told POLITICO that the House will intervene if the North Carolina court ordered the election certified for Harris before the state investigation has concluded. Any House member could object to seating Harris and block him, triggering an investigation by Fudge's committee. Fudge said that three House panels — the Oversight, Judiciary and Administration committees — have started discussing the situation and will be meeting over the next week “to determine what all of our options are.” “It is our hope that the courts in North Carolina would do the right thing,” Fudge said. “If they chose not to the right thing, or if for some reason he brings a certification here, we would challenge the propriety of seating him at that point until such time as there was a proper investigation done by the House.” Fudge added that the full House could possibly go so far as to sue the state of North Carolina. If a judge orders that Harris be declared the winner, Fudge said, she is “confident that the House would bring an action against the state of North Carolina." Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the new chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said he could begin requesting documents “like paychecks, any kind of agreements” between Harris’ campaign and Dowless this month. Cummings, who now wields subpoena power in the majority, also threatened to call Dowless to Washington for an interview. “It’s quite possible that we’ll want to bring in [Dowless],” Cummings said. “We’re certainly are looking at it very carefully.” “When it comes to a state’s electoral process I think we have to be very careful and try to allow that state to provide due process. But at the same time we cannot just turn our heads to alleged voter fraud,” Cummings added. “It would be almost legislative malpractice if we fail to consider at least getting some preliminary information.” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who is expected to head an Oversight subcommittee with jurisdiction over the North Carolina matter, said to “stay tuned” for a hearing announcement. If Harris does manage to get certified as the election winner, McCready — who initially conceded the race but has since withdrawn the concession and started preparations for a new election — could contest the certification, triggering a provision in the federal election law that would prompt an investigation by the Administration Committee. Even if McCready didn’t contest the result and Harris showed up to Congress with certification papers demanding to be seated, any member could object by presenting a resolution, which would force a floor vote. At that point, Democrats expect they would have enough votes to send the matter to the House Administration Committee for investigation. Back in North Carolina, the state election board plans to respond to Harris’ legal challenge by the Jan. 14 deadline imposed by the court for briefing statements. But the matter has been complicated by the dissolution of the board last week. New board members will not be seated until Jan. 31, meaning a hearing will likely take place no earlier than mid-February. Harris and North Carolina Republicans argue that there isn’t enough public evidence proving the ballot irregularities we “We think that Mark Harris will at some point in the future be presenting a certificate of election from a certified race in North Carolina to Congress, because Mark Harris in fact won more legal votes, and after 60 some days a board of elections presented no evidence to show otherwise,” charged Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the North Carolina Republican party. Susan Mills, the vice chair of the 9th District GOP, said Harris is “doing what’s necessary”by filing a petition with the court. “The North Carolina GOP should challenge anything coming out of the Democratic-controlled House,” Mills said. “I wouldn’t do anything that Nancy Pelosi and her buddies wanted without challenging and without more information.” Still, the North Carolina elections board is functioning at the staff level, carrying out interviews, including one with Harris. And it intends to continue the election fraud investigation regardless of any intervention by the state court. “As a staff we want to conduct an evidentiary hearing at some point so that the public may fully understand what occurred in this election,” NCSBE spokesperson Patrick Gannon said when asked if a judicial certification would impact the investigation. “The agency remains steadfast in its obligation to ensure confidence in the elections process.”
"I think the prospect of a new election dropped significantly" after the latest developments, Mark Harris says. Mark Harris doesn’t expect a new election in the disputed 9th District race https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article223937685.html Republican Mark Harris said he believes the likelihood of a new election in the 9th Congressional District has dropped with recent changes to the state elections board. Harris has seen his apparent victory in November’s election clouded by allegations of election fraud, particularly in Bladen County. Amid a probe into the allegations, a panel of three state judges last month dissolved the nine-member State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement. A new five-member State Board of Elections — with three Democrats and two Republicans — is expected to be named Jan. 31. By law, it would then take four of the five members to order a new election. “So I think the prospect of a new election dropped significantly with the dissolution of the board,” Harris told the Observer. However, it would take three members to certify Harris’ apparent victory over Democrat Dan McCready. Harris led by 905 votes in unofficial returns. The old elections board twice declined to certify his election, and the new Democratic-controlled House declined to seat him when it convened on Thursday. But a new state elections board isn’t the only authority that could order a new election. So could the courts. So could Congress, according to state election officials. And a provision of state law even gives the governor authority to call a new congressional election in some cases. Though no election board currently exists, its staff has continued to investigate the allegations of absentee ballot fraud in the district, particularly in Bladen County. The staff interviewed Harris on Thursday. He said he plans to turn over more documents this coming week. At the center of the controversy is McCrae Dowless, a Bladen County elected official and political operative. In 2016, Dowless worked for Republican Todd Johnson’s 9th District campaign in Bladen County. In that county, Johnson got 221 absentee votes to 4 for Harris and 1 for GOP incumbent Robert Pittenger. In the district as a whole, Johnson finished third. Asked if those figures had raised any red flags, Harris told the Observer he was told by a lawyer that there was no indication of wrongdoing. Harris said when her decided to hire Dowless for his 2018 run, his campaign did a criminal background search that he said found only “a few” misdemeanors. But it failed to turn up information that showed Dowless was a convicted felon who faced jail time for fraud and perjury, according to court records. Dowless was convicted of felony fraud in 1992 in Iredell County, according to court records. He and his wife were accused of taking out an insurance policy on a dead man and collecting nearly $165,000 from his death, according to a 1991 Fayetteville Observer article. The Observer previously reported that he served more than six months of a two-year prison sentence. Harris also has taken the case to state court. On Thursday his lawyer petitioned a Wake County Superior Court to order the executive director of the elections board to certify his election immediately. The court has asked parties to submit briefs by Jan. 14.
An update... Judge rejects Mark Harris' bid to be declared 9th District winner https://www.wral.com/judge-rejects-mark-harris-bid-to-be-declared-9th-district-winner/18139441/
“North Carolina elections officials looking into ballot fraud in the country’s last undecided congressional election are finding that votes were counted days ahead of Election Day in the rural county at the center of disputed results,” NBC News reports. “Elections officials also said the election was marred by falsified signatures, blank ballots that consultants could complete and disappearing documents.” Republican = Born Criminal
Why don't you go over to the proper thread discussing the latest developments.... including the development that the WRAL investigation news story released on Friday the 15th demonstrated that operatives for the Democratic Bladen County Improvement Association PAC actually submitted more improper absentee ballots than the Republican operatives for McCrae Dowless. https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/the-latest-from-the-9th-district-controversy.330003/
Signing absentee ballots for people who are not related to you.... like all these Democratic operatives did... is a crime. Yes, obviously, it is beyond improper. But, of course, it is the same thing the Republican operatives did in Bladen County. Except Democrats did more of it.
Then get your Trump DOJ to prosecute those Dems, the fact is that the Republican got caught doing it and now you want to play the both side games. Won't work. Fraud is in the Republican DNA, see Trump University.