North Carolina Elections Board Dissolves, Adding New Chaos in House Race

The unwinding of the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement is a consequence of a long-running battle over partisan power in North Carolina and separate from the voter fraud investigation. Yet the dissolution heightened the possibility that the 9th District seat would remain empty for weeks or even months, and it plunged the chaotic fight for the House seat into deeper turmoil.

Mark Harris, the Republican nominee in the district, appeared to defeat Dan McCready, the Democratic candidate, by 905 votes in last month’s general election. But state officials have been investigating whether a contractor for Harris engaged in illegal activity to compromise the election on the Republican’s behalf. 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 allegations of misconduct prompted the elections board to refuse to certify Harris as the winner. An ongoing state investigation has involved more than 100 interviews and at least 182,000 pages of records so far, officials said.

No one has been charged in connection with the allegations, including Dowless, who has a history of convictions for fraud and perjury and was previously scrutinized by authorities for possible election tampering. Dowless, who has declined to comment, refused a request to meet with state investigators.

Those investigators were to present their findings at an elections board hearing Jan. 11. But plans for the hearing eventually ran headlong into a case that dealt with the constitutionality of the elections board’s design. On Thursday night, a three-judge panel angrily rejected a bipartisan request to extend the life of the board temporarily.

The ruling left the board with less than 24 hours to exist, and plans for the hearing uncertain. Some state officials said Friday that the structure of legislation setting up the future elections board meant it could not begin operations until Jan. 31.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.