State to continue investigating 9th Congressional District election

The vote was 7-2, signaling bipartisan agreement on the board but not full support from the body's four Republicans. Mark Harris, who was the apparent congressman-elect before board first declined to certify the race Tuesday, issued his first statement on the fiasco late Friday afternoon, criticizing the board for releasing little information about the investigation.

Harris, a Republican, also called on the board to certify the race while the investigation continues, saying anything less would be a disservice to the district's voters.

"Make no mistake, I support any efforts to investigate allegations of irregularities and/or voter fraud, as long as it is fair and focuses on all political parties," Harris said in an emailed statement. "But to date, there is absolutely no public evidence that there are enough ballots in question to affect the outcome of this race."

The board has said little else about the issue. Republican members John Lewis and Stacy "Four" Eggers IV, both attorneys, said Friday that they voted to delay certification because, in Lewis' words, "a very complex and constantly evolving investigation" needs to play out.

Said Eggers: "I took the approach of, I'm going to err on the side of caution. I'm willing to give it a fair hearing."

Republican board members Jay Hemphill and Ken Raymond voted against the plan in a meeting held by conference call. Efforts to reach them afterward were not successful.

A new Congress is due to be seated Jan. 3.

Harris won the race, it seemed, by 905 votes. Democrat Dan McCready conceded the day after the election, and his campaign has not responded this week to WRAL News messages.

The North Carolina Republican Party promised Thursday to bring swift legal action if the board didn't finalize the race Friday. It provided no more details after the board's vote but called on Chairman Andy Penry to resign, saying the lack of information coming from a "shameless Democrat partisan ... makes this entire debacle difficult to grasp."

A number of Republicans were incensed by the lack of public justification for delaying final results. House Elections Chairman David Lewis said late Friday that his committee has "formally demanded" board staff and members come to the its Monday meeting "to answer for the total lack of transparency."

One complicating factor was simplified Friday, for the time being: The state board will continue to exist.

Court had found the board's composition unconstitutional as part of a long-running legal battle between Cooper and the Republican legislative majority, but the court let it stay in place to oversee the November elections. That stay was set to expire Monday, and the Governor's Office and David Lewis disagreed over what would happen next.

Legislators asked the court to extend the stay and got another two weeks, Pat Ryan, spokesman for Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger said Friday evening. The Harris campaign said it had filed a similar motion.

The North Carolina Democratic Party sent the state board half a dozen affidavits Thursday, including two from Bladen County women who testified someone came to their homes and collected their absentee ballots in unsealed envelopes. The question is whether those ballots – and others – were altered or discarded in an effort to swing the election.

An inordinate number of absentee ballots were requested but never returned to election officials in Bladen County and neighboring Robeson County.

In addition to the 9th District race, the state board held off Friday on finalizing a county commissioner race in Bladen County, the county's soil and water conservation district supervisor race and a District Court race in Robeson County.

Two of the affidavits collected by the Democratic Party include a familiar name in Bladen County politics: McCrae Dowless. Dowless has done get-out-the-vote work for Democrats and Republicans in the county, and after the 2016 elections, he claimed irregularities in absentee-by-mail ballots in his soil and water district supervisor's race.

This cycle, Dowless worked as a contractor for the Red Dome Group, founder Andy Yates confirmed to The Charlotte Observer. Red Dome worked for the Harris campaign. Yates has not returned WRAL News calls or emails.

In one affidavit, Herman Dunn of Cumberland County testified that he spoke to Dowless at an early voting location before this year's election and that Dowless told him he was doing absentee work for the Harris campaign and one other campaign, and that he had more than 80 people working for him.

"He also stated that, you know, I don't take checks," Dunn said in his affidavit. "They have to pay me cash."

The Harris campaign's statement Friday didn't address Dowless' connection to the campaign, and the campaign did not respond to a follow up email seeking more information.