NC GOP is singing a new tune now. Basically it’s “screw the evidence, certify Harris now”
https://www.newsobserver.com/latest-news/article223202995.html
I think the NC GOP doesn’t quite know what to do with the situation. But they certainly appear to have taken Harris’ comment about “circling the wagons” to heart. :dubious:
From the linked article, here’s part of the GOP’s statement:
The fact that 60% of the absentee ballots were for Harris, despite the fact that only 19% of absentee voters identify as Republican, evidently doesn’t qualify as evidence of voting irregularities. Nor is the fact that two counties in the district had the highest rate in the state of unreturned absentee ballots.
What they are also saying is that since he won by around 900 votes, if you cannot prove fraud was for more than 900 votes it does not matter.
also they pretty much know the house won’t seat Harris . Their strategy seems to be if they get him certified they might be able to win a court battle.
They simply cannot win a court battle against the House of Representatives. The Constitution is quite explicitly clear that the House is the final authority on that subject.
Which is their goal. If the election is not certified, then there’s a new election with Harris as the Republican candidate. If the election is certified, then the House refuses to seat him, and there’s a new election with some other Republican as the candidate. They’ve judged (probably correctly) that their odds are much better with a new candidate.
in a quick skim I did not see where the House can refuse to seat a member so where is that in the constitution? Also I assume they need a valid reason to deny someone ?
edit - I did find it in section 5 of Article 1. It says each house can determine the qualifications of members.
It looks very much like a lot of the fraud was that requested absentee ballots were collected and thrown out by Harris’s campaign–is that accurate?
If so, then every ballot requested and not returned should be considered to be a vote for the Democrat, because why else would Harris have had those votes thrown out?
Certainly, that’ll unfairly count some votes for the Democrat which were legitimately not cast by the voter who requested it. But when one campaign commits felony election fraud, I’m pretty cool with construing ambiguous results against them–especially when it’s only for the purpose of deciding whether a new election should be held.
On the other hand, the longer and harder that Republicans fight to certify a blatant fraudster, the larger the millstone we can hang around their necks next time they whine about wanting to protect elections with some new voter-suppression tactic. So I encourage them to keep up this repugnant behavior.
This summarizes my take as well. The NC GOP will cling to the ‘didn’t change the outcome’ stance, figuring that the short-term hit from basically saying explicitly that the GOP is ok with a little fraud can be more than offset by a) getting to run a new candidate because the House will definitely not seat Harris and b) since the House will be Dem-controlled from January, the NC GOP can spin it as ‘Democrats meddling in NC elections’ over the longer term. At this point it probably doesn’t even matter if they end up losing the 9th seat.
state board of elections has called the GOP bluff and they are now releasing the evidence. The ringleader of the scam was also obstructing the investigation by telling people what to say. Should have a link a bit later.
New Information on Bladen County’s mess:
Seems like we could eliminate a lot of election fraud if we refused to let Republicans or their “operatives” near anything guarding our democracy.
Harris demanded to be certified by noon today but that did not happen which means he won’t be taking office next week.
What a mess. Someone (maybe a bunch of people) should be going to prison.
And, the North Carolina Elections Board was dissolved today, without certifying the results of the election. What happens next seems to be very unclear.
Nancy Pelosi will not seat him until it’s cleared up.
I’m guessing the House is ultimately going to have to step in and fix it, because North Carolina sure as hell has no interest in doing it.
North Carolina has a law in place to deal with it, enacted over the Governor’s veto, if by “it” we mean a determination that the election was won fraudulently. It’s just going to take a while, since there is no currently constituted Board of Elections.
Of course, if there never is such a determination, then things get murky.
I guess it’s not a surprise, but a conservative group in NC claims that there was absentee ballot fraud in a state house race that was won by a Dem by only 68 votes. I guess it took them this long to find that alleged problem. No link yet , read this on twitter.
Here’s a link on that story: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article224097140.html
Probably just instances of honest mistakes: either people accidentally writing down the wrong date, or not realizing that the witnesses needed to sign at the same time as the voter.
It’s voter fraud when the Republicans do it, but an honest mistake when it’s the Democrats. Got it.