North Carolina Democrats and Republicans both said Thursday they want serious investigations into allegations of widespread elections fraud in one of the most closely divided…
North Carolina Democrats and Republicans both said Thursday they want serious investigations into allegations of widespread elections fraud in one of the most closely divided U. S. House races in the country, though the two sides disputed just who should conduct an inquiry.
In a press conference in Raleigh, three Republican state senators who represent parts of North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District asked Gov. Roy Cooper (D) to create a bipartisan task force to investigate allegations that a contractor working for Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris was illegally urging people to collect voters’ absentee ballots.
“What needs to happen right now is a comprehensive and transparent and nonpartisan investigative process so that voters can have confidence that the system is operating as it should,” state Sen. Dan Bishop (R) said Thursday.
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Harris, a pastor, leads Democrat Dan McCready by just 905 votes, about 0.8 percentage points. But questions have been raised about voting irregularities in rural Bladen County, where a suspicious number of absentee ballots favored Harris over McCready.
But the lawmakers said they had lost confidence in the state Board of Elections, which has opened an investigation.
“Sufficient action must be taken, and there’s reason to doubt the capacity of the state board of elections to handle the problem,” Bishop said.
Meanwhile, Democrats said Republicans were trying to undermine the existing investigation by questioning the bipartisan Board of Elections.
North Carolina Democratic Party chairman Wayne Goodwin accused the GOP of trying to “derail” the ongoing probe.
“Instead of supporting a thorough investigation, Republicans are attacking a state board that they themselves created in an attempt to obfuscate and distract from what’s happening in 9th Congressional District,” Goodwin said.
“Republicans requested to keep the current board in place, but as evidence of wrongdoing are mounting day by day, they no longer want this board to investigate.
