Candidate filing opens for 9th District seat

Last Monday, state elections officials set dates for primaries and a new general election in the 9th Congressional District.

Candidate filing will run March 11 through March 15, primaries will be held May 14 and a general election will be held Sept. 10. If runoffs are needed in either primary, that would be held Sept. 10, and the general election would move back to Nov. 5.

State elections director Kim Strach said her staff would "be on the ground" in Bladen and Robeson counties to ensure all protocols are followed properly.

Republican Mark Harris led Democrat Dan McCready by about 900 votes after the November election, but the state board refused to certify the results because of suspicious absentee voting patterns in Bladen and Robeson counties.

Testimony from a four-day hearing showed McCrae Dowless, a Bladen County political operative whom Harris had hired for get-out-the-vote efforts, sent people dor to door to collect absentee ballots, which is illegal in North Carolina.

Lisa Britt, who worked for Dowless, also testified that she and other staffers sometimes filled out incomplete ballots and that she forged her mother's signature as a witness on absentee ballots because Dowless said she was witnessing too many.

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman, who has been investigating election fraud allegations in Bladen County for a year, said more charges are possible after she reviews the findings of the state board's hearing.

A state law enacted in December requires that new primaries be held whenever a new congressional election is ordered.

Although state law says candidates that were on the original ballot should appear on the ballot in a new election, Katelyn Love, deputy general counsel for the elections board, said that new candidate filing period is needed because the state already certified the primary results in the 9th District.

If the board had never certified those results and had ordered new primaries, then the election would be limited to candidates who ran in the 9th District last year, Love said. Because that's not the case, the new election needs to be opened up to new candidates, she said.

North Carolina Republican Party officials said they expect numerous candidates in the GOP primary.