Opponent says Mark Harris knew about fraud in 9th District election or turned blind eye to it

Republican Mark Harris needs to testify under oath as to what he knows about alleged absentee ballot fraud in the 9th Congressional District election, his opponent said Tuesday.

Posted 11:01 p.m. Feb 5, 2019 — Updated 11:01 p.m. Feb 5, 2019

David Crabtree

, WRAL anchor/reporter, & Matthew Burns, WRAL.com senior producer/politics editor

RALEIGH, N.C. — Republican Mark Harris needs to testify under oath as to what he knows about alleged absentee ballot fraud in the 9th Congressional District election, his opponent said Tuesday.

Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by about 900 votes in the race, but the State Board of Elections has refused to certify the results because of suspected voting irregularities in Bladen and Robeson counties.

Harris has acknowledged hiring Bladen County political operative McCrae Dowless to oversee absentee ballot operations in the county. Several people have told reporters that Dowless paid them to pick up mail-in ballots, a felony under North Carolina law due to tampering concerns.

Dowless has, through his attorney, denied any wrongdoing, but he hasn't yet sat down with elections board investigators looking at the 9th District.

9th Congressional District Coverage

The elections board has scheduled a Feb. 18 public hearing to review the evidence collected in the investigation. In addition to seeing the evidence himself, McCready said Tuesday that he's eager to hear what Harris knew about Dowless' actions and when he knew it.

"My focus all along has been let's have the facts, let's find out what actually happened as to election fraud that was conducted by my opponent's campaign," McCready said in an interview with WRAL News.

"We don't know if he stole hundreds of votes or thousands of votes," he said, citing affidavits filed in the investigation that the elections board has made public so far that allege Dowless was seen with hundreds of absentee ballots and that he had crews of people going door to door collecting ballots.

"One thing we know is that this all goes to the very top of Mark Harris' campaign," McCready said.

Dowless' actions in elections have been scrutinized for years, and McCready said he heard rumors last fall of shenanigans Dowless was involved in during the 9th District campaign.

"We're responsible for our actions. I'm responsible for what my people do or don't do," he said. "I only see two options here: Either Mark Harris knew what was going on, or he turned a blind eye to fraud and built a culture of corruption in his campaign."

House by house, more questions emerge in 9th District

Jason Williams, Harris' campaign manager, said McCready is resorting to "hyperbole and conjecture" to smear Harris.

"The affidavits his campaign submitted have fallen apart. The N.C. Democratic Party rally for him was unable to produce a single voter who had their vote affected," Williams said in a statement. "We're looking forward to the evidentiary hearing in two weeks to hear the board's final report and have this race certified. The people of the Ninth District deserve to have their voices represented in Washington, and Congressman-elect Harris is anxious to get to work."

The 9th District is the only seat in Congress that is vacant, and Democrats in charge of the U.S. House have said they wouldn't seat Harris until the fraud allegations are resolved.

The public hearing on the investigation was supposed to be held weeks ago, but the previous nine-member elections board was dissolved by court order in late December after a panel of state judges ruled lawmakers had overstepped their authority in the way they set it up and in making other changes to the state's elections administration system in 2016.

A new five-member board was appointed last week. While waiting for the new board, Harris tried to get a court to order state Elections Director Kim Strach to certify the 9th District results and effectively declare him the winner. But the judge refused, saying the new board has the authority to continue the investigation that started in November.

McCready said he will accept the board's decision if they end up certifying the November results, and he wouldn't say whether he's pushing for a new election. Regardless of what happens, he said he's confident a lot of information will come out about how the race was run.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at what happened here and say these aren't the kind of values we deserve in our public servants. It's not the kind of leadership we deserve," he said.

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