The North Carolina State Board of Elections declared today that a new election for Congress will be held in the state’s 9th District.
The announcement came shortly after Republican candidate Mark Harris, who held a narrow lead in the race, called for a new vote.
His statement startled the elections board hearing on allegations of widespread voting fraud, drawing “audible gasps” in the hearing room at the North Carolina capital in Raleigh, according to the New York Times.
“It appears to me the irregularities and improprieties occurred to such an extent that they tainted the results of the entire election and cast doubt on its fairness,” said board chairman Bob Cordle, shortly before the five-member board voted unanimously to throw out the November count.
Harris had led Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes in the election in the 9th District, which borders South Carolina and includes part of the city of Charlotte.
The fraud case involves a political operative, Leslie Dowless, who witnesses say was behind an alleged illegal scheme to collect and sometimes fill in absentee ballots on Harris’s behalf. Harris says he hired Dowless “on the advice of a number of Republican friends and colleagues,” reports the Washington Post.
Dowless refused a request that he testify before the board. He has not been charged with any crimes.
On the witness stand in the fourth day of the hearing, Harris told the board that “It’s become clear to me that the public’s confidence in the Ninth District’s general election has been undermined to an extent that a new election is warranted.” He then left the hearing room.
“It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Harris, a pastor from Charlotte … would run again for the congressional seat,” the Times said, adding that “Mr. Harris’s announcement … was an abrupt collapse of the Republican effort to stave off a new vote in the district.”
On Wednesday, Harris’s son, John Harris — a federal prosecutor — testified that in 2017 he warned his father in phone calls and emails that he believed Dowless broke voting laws in an earlier election.
“Harris said he didn’t follow his son’s advice in part because John Harris was just 27 years old at the time,” the Post reported.
