What are the rules for calling for new elections in NC?

RALEIGH – The 9th District fraud saga seems to be reaching critical mass. Democrats called for a new election immediately after hints of fraud by vendors of Republican candidate Mark Harris. State Republican leaders pushed back, pointing out that the numbers of ballots in question were not enough to change the result of the election, and therefore election of Harris (the unofficial winner) should be certified by the State Board of Elections while the investigation went forward.

Indeed, three of the four tripwires written in state statute for calling a new election require enough votes to be in question to change the result of the race if they were thrown out. While new corroborations of sketchy vote harvesting in Bladen County (and other counties) seems to be dripping out every hour, hard evidence of fraudulent activity doesn’t seem, at this point, to meet that threshold.

Mark Harris led the vote totals by 905 votes. Even an avalanche of fraud evidence in Bladen County would likely come up short, though it’d be close if every absentee ballot requested by ring leader Leslie Mccrae Dowless and his crew were deemed to either be illegally tampered with, or illegally discarded.

However, the hard numbers of votes in question may not even matter at this point, because the fourth tripwire for calling for a new election is a lot more subjective.

While the first three require a possible change in the outcome of a race due to fraud, the fourth only requires “irregularities or improprieties occurred to such an extent that they taint the results of the entire election and cast doubt on its fairness.”

Had this been a smaller race with less media attention, the apparent fraud probably would not rise to the level ‘tainting’ the entire election. Likewise, if a Democrat had been the victor, even with the same level of fraud, the Left-leaning media undoubtedly would have snoozed on the story.

But it was neither of those scenarios. It was an important congressional race that stood to affect the majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Democrat narrowly lost.

As such, the media has gone full speed ahead with coverage and investigative reporting to a level that is sure to ‘taint’ the perception of fairness in this race. Not that it doesn’t rise to the level of being tainted, or that severe consequences should not be doled to everyone directly involved in committing fraud, but does anyone honestly believed the attention wold have reach the national level if the partisan labels were reversed?

The media storm is raging over the 9th District, and legitimate evidence of fraud is fueling the convection. It appears likely that the election has been tainted to the point of casting doubt on its fairness due to the media attention alone.

Often times political news quiets down after election day, as people get into the holiday spirit and focus on other things. 2018 is going to be different.

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