Campaign Watch: Judge Refuses to Declare Winner in 9th District

A state Superior Court judge has rejected candidate Mark Harris’s petition to be declared winner of the Ninth Congressional District election, due to the ongoing investigation of alleged absentee ballot fraud involving his campaign.

Judge Paul Ridgeway ruled there is no justification for taking the extraordinary step of compelling the state Board of Elections staff to certify Harris’s election before their investigation is concluded. He said that once a winner in a race is certified, there is no provision for undoing that certification even if the election is later found to have been tainted.

The unofficial vote count shows Harris with a narrow lead of about 900 votes. However, lawyers for the state successfully argued that the outcome could have been affected by absentee ballot fraud in support of Harris.

Publicly released evidence is already sufficient to allege a pattern of illegal collection of absentee ballots by a Harris campaign operative. Unusual numbers of absentee ballots were cast for Harris in two counties in which that operative and his agents worked. In addition, thousands of other requested absentee ballots in those counties were never returned. It has been alleged that many of those may have been ballots intended for Harris’s opponent Dan McCready, but which were illegally collected and never turned in.

Lawyers for the state Republican Party argued that the time for investigation had expired. However, their refusal to submit names for an interim election board to complete the investigation and hearings on the case has contributed to the delays. At this point, no new board can be seated until January 31, and the new board will then need to hear arguments and evidence in the case.

Selection of the new board may be further delayed, as Gov. Roy Cooper has ruled two of the Republican Party’s new nominees legally ineligible for the seats.

This remains the only seat in Congress still undecided for the session which began almost three weeks ago. McCready has been endorsed by the national League of Conservation Voters, and is seeking to have a new election ordered.

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