North Carolina’s Unsettled Congressional Race Is an Absolute Mess

House Democrats vow to not seat the Republican incumbent while an investigation is still ongoing.

Republican candidate Mark Harris answers questions at a news conference ON Nov. 7, 2018.David T. Foster Iii/Charlotte Observer/TNS/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

On January 3, 40 freshman Democrats will be sworn in, officially flipping the House from red to blue. But the seat for the 9th Congressional District in North Carolina will remain empty.

The race between Republican Mark Harris and Democratic candidate Dan McCready has been roiled by allegations of ballot fraud against the Republican, who leads the count by just over 900 votes. Harris’s campaign is facing allegations that a contractor, Leslie McCrae Dowless, ran an operation that illegally collected absentee ballots in the rural Branard County. Investigations into the integrity of the election have raised additional questions that date back to the primary.

Democrats accused Harris of trying to short-circuit these investigations when he filed an emergency petition to the nine-member state election board to certify his victory. The board already voted unanimously earlier this month to not certify the results while it was investigating the election. A court ruling from an unrelated case had found that the election board in its current form was unconstitutional, and ordered that it be disband by noon on Friday. A new board approved by the Republican-controlled legislature will assume its duties January 31, potentially leaving the election results unsettled for several more weeks. Harris has said he’ll next seek a decision from a federal court to certify that he won the seat in Congress.

Incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Friday that House Democrats have no intention of swearing in Harris next week. “Given the now well-documented election fraud that took place in NC-09, Democrats would object to any attempt by [Mark] Harris to be seated on January 3,” Hoyer said in a statement. “In this instance, the integrity of our democratic process outweighs concerns about the seat being vacant at the start of the new Congress.”

The situation is an awkward one for Republicans who have long stretched the truth about concerns over voter fraud helping Democrats in elections. There is no evidence for widespread in-person voter fraud, but North Carolina Republicans have used those fears to implement some of the strictest voter ID requirements in the country—laws that do more to suppress turnout than root out the chances of possible tampering with ballots.

“My own view is, we probably ought to redo the general election,” Hoyer told CNN.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate