As 2019 progresses through February, it might seem as though it’s time to wrap up midterm elections and to start thinking instead about springtime, the upcoming year, and, yes, the 2020 Presidential Election. And yet, despite the several months that have passed since the November 6th Election Day, in the 9th district of North Carolina, there is still a house race in contention due to some serious accusations of voter fraud.
North Carolina’s 9th district covers the central southern border of the state, including part of Charlotte, one of North Carolina’s largest and most influential cities. Republican U.S. Representatives have held the district of over 770,000 residents since 1963. However, in the 2018 midterm elections, incumbent Republican Robert Pittenger, who had served the district for the past five years, lost the primary to Republican Mark Harris, who then went up against Democrat Connor McCready and Libertarian Jeff Scott.
On election night in November, it was originally reported that Mark Harris had won, beating McCready by just 905 votes. However, things quickly started to go downhill for Harris as just a few weeks later on November 27th, the bipartisan State Board of Elections voted unanimously to not certify the election results.
The case essentially breaks down to the following: Mark Harris hired McCrae Dowless, a convicted felon for perjury and fraud, as an independent contractor for his campaign. Dowless is accused of hiring people to collect absentee ballots from people’s homes in order to only turn in the ones that would seem favorable to Harris rather than McCready. Major evidence has already been gathered against Harris, including witnesses coming forward to say that someone came to their door and collected their ballots, and yet none of their votes show up as having been counted when they are looked up in voter records.
The way the timeline now stands, the State Board of Elections is expected to hold a hearing within the next week in order to determine where the race will go from here, which could include a new election being held. However, the biggest irony of this case is that North Carolina elected Republicans have been spouting the dangers of voter fraud for years in the state, despite there being very little evidence that any has ever occurred (up until now, that is). These concerns over a so-called “history of fraud” have been what NC Republicans have used to garner support for voter ID laws in the state—some of which have been struck down after being proven to intentionally prevent African-Americans from voting.
If the North Carolina GOP wants to talk so much about voting fraud, it is blatantly irresponsible for them to act as though Mark Harris should not even be under suspicion. Understandably, with the major headlines currently being made about the President and Congress, a 3-month-old congressional race is not at the forefront of the nation’s minds. However, if Mark Harris’ campaign is found guilty of illegal vote harvesting, we cannot allow the GOP to sweep this scandal under the rug, since it would mean that he not only intentionally disregarded the will of District 9’s voters but also that he committed the very crime that his party claims to be working to eradicate.
Lila Olson
Lila, a staff writer at “In the Zeitgeist,” is a junior at NYU who is triple majoring in English Literary Studies, Politics, and Spanish. She is originally from Raleigh, North Carolina, and has experience writing professionally in both English and Spanish-speaking settings, as well as several years of experience working closely with children. In the future, Lila hopes to establish a career based in clinical social work or rehabilitation counseling. When she’s not busy working on homework, Lila enjoys painting, spending time with her family and dogs, and discussing time travel.
