Rural N.C. county again embroiled in voter fraud investigation - Entrepreneur Generations

A rural North Carolina county is, for at least the fifth time since 2010, embroiled in accusations of voter fraud. Bladen County, just south of Raleigh, is at the center of an investigation into voting irregularities in the 2018 election for the 9th Congressional District. The State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement has not yet certified the results of the election, which Republican Mark Harris apparently won by 905 votes over Democrat Dan McCready, Brian Murphy, Carli Brosseau, and Anna Douglas report for The Charlotte Observer.

"The board has scheduled a hearing later this month to hear evidence about voting irregularities with absentee ballots in Bladen and Robeson counties," the Observer reports. McCrae Dowless, a contractor who worked for Harris, allegedly contributed to the voter fraud. In both the primary and general elections, Harris received a suspiciously high percentage of mail-in absentee votes from Bladen County. A Democratic candidate Dowless worked for in 2010 also got far more mail-in votes than his opponent, the Observer reports.

Some voters say Dowless or those working for him collected their absentee ballots, which is illegal. The ballots could have been changed before submission or discarded if not favorable to the desired candidate.

"Treating absentee ballots as a valuable commodity to be sold and brokered is a long-standing problem in poor areas of the rural South and Appalachia," said Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which published The Rural Blog.

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2rpv0gV Rural N.C. county again embroiled in voter fraud investigation - Entrepreneur Generations

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