In court documents, Harris argues state board should certify 9th District results

Harris filed a legal brief Monday in support of his request for a writ of mandamus, a court order that forces a public agency to exercise one of its responsibilities. He's asking a Wake County Superior Court judge to command state elections officials to immediately certify the election results and release any investigative materials into election irregularities.

"By leaving the Ninth District race undecided, the Bipartisan Board has struck a blow to representative democracy," the brief filed on Harris' behalf reads. "It effectively has disfranchised the more than 778,000 people living in the Ninth District by bureaucratic fiat, denying them representation in the 116th Congress."

Other parties in the case, including Democratic opponent Dan McCready and lawyers for the state board, filed their own briefs Monday evening.

The North Carolina Attorney General's Office asked the court to deny Harris' request, arguing on behalf of state elections officials that their actions "to investigate and verify the integrity of the CD 9 election have been grounded in sound legal authority."

Writing in support of state election officials, McCready's filing said the Harris campaign's demand "fails to satisfy even one – let alone all – of the legal requirements" to force the certification of the 2018 vote.

An investigative report completed by the state elections investigators in January 2018 found evidence "strongly suggesting" Dowless paid people to gather both absentee request forms and ballots from area voters in the 2016 election.

Under North Carolina law, it's a felony for anyone other than a voter, a voter's relative or a voter's guardian to possess someone else's ballot.

As the state's investigation into those irregularities continues, the U.S. House has also indicated it may get involved. In a Friday letter to the State Board of Elections Executive Director Kim Strach, Democratic California Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren demanded that the state board retain and preserve all of its investigative materials in case the House launches its own probe.

In the state's legal brief filed Monday on behalf of North Carolina election officials, lawyers pointed to the potential House investigation and the chamber's decision not to seat Harris as another reason to deny his request to the court to order the certification of the election results.

But in its own 600-page filing, Harris' legal team laid out multiple arguments for forcing state election officials to act.

The brief says the absentee ballots at issue weren't numerous enough to overcome the Republican candidate's 900-vote lead. But if there was a broader problem, the filing said, more elections than just his would have been affected.

"The State Board's position – that only the Ninth District race was tainted, while the other races in the same geographic area were not – defies reason," the filing says.

Affidavits supplied by the McCready campaign, Harris' lawyers wrote, account for only 13 voters and include hearsay and claims from people with criminal histories. That evidence, the filing claims, isn't enough to "usurp the will of the voters."

But attorneys for state elections officials say that amid the ongoing investigation, whether the alleged fraud altered the outcome of the race remains "an open question."

"However, the mere existence of that open question, and reports of widespread fraud, more than satisfy the 'may have changed the result of an election' qualifier," the filing on behalf of state elections officials says.

Harris' attorneys do note that the Republican candidate seeks a resolution only to the 2018 election and does not seek an end to the investigation itself.

But it's unclear exactly how the case – or its related investigations – will proceed.

A court order issued in a separate legal battle between Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Republican state legislative leaders dissolved the State Board of Elections on Dec. 28. A new board won't be appointed until Jan. 31 under a state law passed last month to comply with the court ruling.

The full-time staff of the agency, including Strach, remains in place, however. That's why Harris' legal filing specifically asked the court to force Strach to certify the election, an action the state countered she doesn't have the authority to perform.