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.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

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