It's been three weeks since Election Day, but one congressional race is still up in the air.
North Carolina's election officials still haven't certified who won the state's 9th District, and voted Friday to further investigate the race's results. That's because several stories of absentee voting gone wrong have surfaced since Election Day, The Washington Post reports.
The most recent results put Mark Harris (R) over Dan McCready (D) by about 1,800 votes, per The New York Times. But a "flurry of affidavits" have since poured in from voters in rural Bladen County, which "had the highest percentage of absentee ballot requests in the state," The Charlotte Observer writes. Some voters say people came to their house and illegally asked for their absentee ballots, even if they weren't filled out, signed, or sealed, the affidavits detail. Others say they received absentee ballots in the mail without requesting them. McCready easily won over absentee voters in all of the 9th District's counties except for Bladen, suggesting a Harris-paid consultant could be "at the center" of a fraud scheme, the Observer writes.
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The state board of elections has since unanimously refused to certify the election's results and passed a motion saying it would assess the "claims of numerous irregularities and concerted fraudulent activities related to absentee mail ballots." The office is likely weeks away from announcing official results and may even hold a new election, per the Post.
The 9th District is one of many North Carolina districts a federal court ruled were gerrymandered in favor of Republicans. Explore a map of these controversial districts at The New York Times.
