Even before Democrats made that fresh vow on Friday afternoon, the chaotic fight for the 9th District’s House seat had already plunged into deeper turmoil: North Carolina’s state elections board dissolved at noon Friday under a court order, two weeks before it was to hold a public hearing to consider evidence of the fraud allegations.
“We have entered no man’s land,” said J. Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina.
Friday’s political drama came more than seven weeks after Mark Harris, the Republican nominee for Congress in the 9th District, seemed to defeat Dan McCready, the Democratic candidate, by 905 votes in November. But Harris’ apparent victory was soon overshadowed by allegations that a contractor for his campaign engaged in illegal activity to compromise the election. According to witnesses and affidavits, the contractor, L. McCrae Dowless Jr., and people working for him collected absentee ballots in violation of state law.
The accusations led the state Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement to refuse to certify Harris as the winner and to open an investigation that has so far involved more than 100 interviews and at least 182,000 pages of records. It also gave Democrats a powerful argument to keep Harris out of office, at least for now — a pledge they made unequivocally Friday — under the House’s constitutional authority to be “the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members.” Democrats had been signaling such a plan for weeks.
Citing what he described as the “well-documented election fraud that took place,” Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the incoming House majority leader, said Friday that “Democrats would object to any attempt by Mr. Harris to be seated on Jan. 3.”
Hoyer added, “In this instance, the integrity of our democratic process outweighs concerns about the seat being vacant at the start of the new Congress.”
But the direction of North Carolina’s investigation into the allegations faced new obstacles Friday as the elections board dissolved, a court-ordered consequence of a long-running battle over partisan power in North Carolina that was separate from the election fraud investigation. Even with the demise of the board, state officials said the inquiry would continue at the staff level, even if a board was not yet in place to consider evidence and reach conclusions.
“The staff will continue to investigate the 9th District irregularities and perform all other elections-related functions,” said Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the embattled panel.
The state board issued a new round of subpoenas in the hours before its dissolution. And in a letter Friday, Joshua Malcolm, the Democrat who was chairman of the elections board, complained that Harris’ campaign had not been sufficiently responsive to a subpoena that was served weeks ago.
Malcolm said investigators had received 398 pages of campaign records — and believed there were about 140,000 other documents that could be of value to investigators but had not been made available.
“You are hereby requested to fully comply with the board’s subpoena so as to not further impact the agency’s ability to resolve the investigation,” Malcolm wrote in his letter to Harris’ campaign.
In a statement Friday, a lawyer for Harris, David Freedman, said the Republican candidate and his campaign had “cooperated fully with the investigation.”
Harris has denied wrongdoing but acknowledged this month he had directed the hiring of Dowless, a political operative from Bladen County who had previously been scrutinized by authorities for possible election tampering. No one, including Dowless, has been charged in connection with this year’s allegations, and Dowless, who has declined to comment, rejected a request to meet with state investigators.
Those investigators had been expected to present their findings at an elections board hearing Jan. 11. After reviewing evidence at that hearing, the state board was expected to determine whether to order a new election under a North Carolina law that allows a new vote if “irregularities or improprieties occurred to such an extent that they taint the results of the entire election and cast doubt on its fairness.”
But plans for the January hearing, and the fate of the board, eventually ran headlong into a case that dealt with the constitutionality of the elections board’s design. On Thursday night, in a decision that stunned North Carolina Democrats and Republicans alike, a three-judge panel angrily rejected a bipartisan request to temporarily extend the life of the board.
The ruling left the board with less than 24 hours to exist, and plans for the Jan. 11 hearing uncertain. Some state officials said Friday that the structure of recent legislation setting up the future elections board meant it could not begin operations until Jan. 31.
Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said Friday that he intended to name an interim board that would serve until the new law took effect. It was not immediately clear how quickly Cooper would act, but Republicans said they would challenge such a move and would consider a boycott of the board.
Before the board’s end on Friday, Harris made a final effort to have the panel certify his election. In an emergency motion to the state board, Harris’ campaign asserted it was “not aware of irregularities or other concerns sufficient in number to change the outcome of the election.”
The board, which said it received the motion at 10:15 a.m., took no action before its dissolution at noon.
A spokesman for McCready, Aaron Simpson, said it appeared Harris was “doing all he can to obstruct this bipartisan investigation into the illegal election activities within his own campaign.”
Freedman, Harris’ lawyer, said the Republican “looks forward to this matter coming to a resolution as quickly as possible, so that he may serve the people of the 9th Congressional District as he was elected to do.”
But Malcolm, in his final minutes as elections board chairman, suggested the state would not hasten its inquiry.
“The main goal of state board staff has been and continues to be a thorough and transparent investigation into elections irregularities, so that state board members have as much evidence as possible in front of them when they consider whether to certify the 9th Congressional District contest or order a new election,” he wrote. “The faith of voters in our election system depends on that.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.