Disputed North Carolina Race May Hinge on a Shadowy Operative

There appears to be enough "questionable" votes to turn the election. Short of calling for a new election there may be a simpler way. Notify all absentee voters in the two counties that voted, & have them appear & re-certify their votes. Notify non-voting absentee ballot voters & have them appear & verify that they DIDN'T vote.

As a former resident of Bladen County, I am disgusted that the natives continue to be taken advantage of by one of their own. Are we so obsessed by the R or the D that we ignore personal ethics? We've sold our integrity for 30 pieces of silver in the US.

Absentee balloting has grown across the country because it is more convenient than waiting until election day and standing in line at the polls. Here on California's Central Coast, a majority of voters cast absentee ballots. But we have to mail them in. The envelopes have to contain our signatures before the ballots can be counted. Is there fraud? Possibly. It's hard to imagine voting officials stopping to match every signature, but if someone were to cry foul, said officials would have to go back and check signatures. Mail-in ballots are the only way to ensure that rampant fraud does not occur.

This should be a wake-up call to all of us who love our states’ vote-by-mail process and advocate it for other states. There is still opportunity for fraud. This past election cycle when my ballot did not arrive in the mail, despite online verification that it had been mailed, I worried that someone had stolen it from my mailbox. Consequently, I voted in person as soon as early voting began - to void the missing ballot. A few days before Election Day, that ballot - mangled by postal machinery - did arrive in the mail. While mail-in and absentee ballots are more convenient for voters, we cannot be impatient to learn accurate election results. Verifying signatures is most important and takes time. It is heartening that these NC county officials were not in a hurry to certify results.

A former colleague of mine went to Pennsylvania with Election Protection in 2004; I went to Florida. After teasing me about the results, he told me that he was with a bunch of of Teamsters when they encountered Republicans doing something similar to what is described in this article. They were going around door-to-door in minority districts with leaflets saying that it was "okay" to vote on Wednesday if people preferred. The Teamsters, and my former colleague, made certain that "their faces were acquainted with the pavement." Seems fair.

It is important to understand that Republican efforts to close or stop this investigation amounts to unlawful seizure of power and rebellion. As such, State instruments of force such as the police are authorized to apprehend such criminals.

I love the way the article delicately avoids using the words "crime" or "criminal" to describe blatant violations of NC Election Law. IMO, the Republicans are privileged to have protection from damage to either their halos or their egos. Just like Mafia Don Trump and his Crime Family. Since when can the focus (Mark Harris Campaign) of an investigation dictate the terms? What happened to fully cooperating with the authorities to get to the truth, Rev. Harris?

Mr. Harris has said he will “support any efforts to investigate allegations of irregularities and/or voter fraud, as long as it is fair and focuses on all political parties.” dude, the only known bad actors in this problem, so far, are republicans and felons convicted of insurance fraud and forgery...you are the political party involved. the crime was done so republicans could win an election. no dems were involved.

So let's get this straight: the Democrats can win (steal?) a half dozen California elections with ballot harvesting but if a Republican wins one in NC it's a tragedy?

The GOP cannot win without fraud. They smeared Hilary for 20 years and still needed the Russians to force a widely famous Republican TV star down the throats of the country. Gerrymandering, GOP-weighted legislation like Citizen's United, voter disenfranchisement; on a straight vote count they wouldn't take 40%. This after years of federal funding of GOP leech states, pork barrel spending, and a curious ability to place military facilities in places that require little or no defense. Get them out so we can get back to business.

The Republican Party has become more of a nationwide anti-democratic insurgency rather than a traditional political party. They seem to have come to the realization that they can only retain power by unethical and even criminal means. I would not be too surprised to see them resort to violence rather than peacefully cede power to the opposition. Under Trump's leadership they have become the enemy within.

Americans (USA..because we aren't the only Americans in the Americas) deserve better. Much better. May it be so.

My heavens. After all of the reckless and false accusations by Republicans of voter fraud by Democrats, here we finally encounter a likely instance of the real thing: on behalf of a Republican!

The Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris is a protege of Mike Huckabee (father of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump's press secretary in charge of Trump propaganda messaging). Mark Harris is an evangelical diehard Trumper. Check out Huckabee's video on youtube "Mark Harris (R-NC) Goes From Pastor To Politics, From Pulpit To Congress | Huckabee". Evil runs deep in the Huckabee family.

This “preacher” Harris is quite a piece of work. A real “Christian” to even accept this seat.

Just when you thought Republicans couldn't be any more amoral and reprehensible. This guy, and anyone else involved with him, deserves significant jail time.

This story reminds me of a couple plots out of Seinfeld and his Newman character. Storing bags of mail, maybe to be sorted out at home or elsewhere and (never) delivered or trashed when convienient. Even Cliff Claven from Cheers had a few tall tales from the Post Office. Before some guy named Deming came up with *just in time (JIT)* as a concept for ordering supplies for manufacturing when needed. Instead of owning warehouses of inventory, which requires counting every year and paying taxes on what is on your shelves. Back in the 70's and into the 21st century, Sears, Roebuck and Co. had *parts and service centers* that would maintain chains of warehouses to store all of replacement parts, as part of their motto was to *service what we sell.* This was the hub of the service side of the business where technicians were dispatched to the home or the customer could drop off their merchandise for service or parts. I maintained the parts inventory from what Sears had a system in place called MIC, for Mechanized Inventory Control. For each item in inventory had it's own SKU, which had a MLS (Minimum Low Stock) which told you when to order more stock. The MLS would trigger a report to tell supervisors how often parts were ordered below the MLS and tell them if you were at or below that number in percent. I found out how to game the system by always ordering at the MLS, no matter what. And guess what, you can do this with ballots, too if you know how many votes you need to win..!

Why would an article about a person that begins with his name, L. McCrae Dowless Jr, not include his picture? Intrigued I google searched this fine individual and discovered that he is the camera-shy sasquatch of Carolina's Great Smoky mountains, an ideal political consultant.

New York Times: Please stay with this story. Stick with this until we get all the facts. Thank you for your important reporting!

Needless to say, though N. Carolina attempts to portray itself as a sunbelt state on the move, it is really just South Carolina with a North in front. Old South, full of Southern men looking back wistfully on the antebellum.

Willie Sutton, a famous bank robber from the 1940s was once reportedly asked why he robbed banks? "Because that's where the money is." Apparently, he never said it, but it explains something important about how to meddle in our voting process. Instead of trying to persuade illegal aliens to show up at the polls, a far more effective option to make a real change in results is to find ways to request absentee ballots from voters unlikely to show up at the polls, then fill them in and submit them with or without their knowledge. Because there is very little security in the system, this could change hundreds or thousands of votes, with much less chance of being caught. Someone in North Carolina discovering the difference in vote returns in two counties merits kudos.

We shouldn't be calling this voter fraud. It's election tampering. And how ironic that the Republicans are the only ones engaging in this fraudulent activity-the very people who consistently complain about voter fraud. The whole thing reminds me of a favorite quote from Alexander Hamilton: "Bad men are apt to paint others as themselves."

I know the US is a large country including lots of rural areas, but even so, the system of absentee voting by (e)mail is unsafe against fraud (I hope there are no other uncovered cases). Early voting only in person seems better but then there is an accessibility problem. Difficult trade-offs, as always.

This is fairly confusing, and too fishy by half. Almost as if someone had manufactured some ELECTION (NOT VOTER) fraud in order to get the Democrats screaming about it so that the efforts of the GOP to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands (millions) of voters via various suppression schemes could be legitimized by crying "fraud," a charge that the Democrats are only too happy to endorse in this case. And a charge that the Dems will be hard put to walk back once they are on record decrying it. The GOP is playing a LONG (and increasingly desperate) game. Who knows where this ridiculously-obvious scheme of messing with absentee ballot s was dreamed up. Who knows to what use it will be put when the GOP next tries to do away with this particular form of user-friendly voting? Even your dear NYT readers do not seem able to get straight the difference between "Voter Fraud" (which this wasn't) and "Election Fraud" (of which this is a way-too-low-hanging example).

Hopefully this is the first step in returning democracy to the Old North State. Don't forget that we are still heavily gerrymandered which means that the majority of us are denied representation that even comes close to what we deserve. The congressman who represents the district where I live even felt comfortable declaring himself "Deplorable" and getting all lovey-dovey with the Crime King himself at a beer-hall rally a few days before the election. Know this people: North Carolina is a blue state and we send good people to DC if and when we are able to engage in a fair contest where our people are encouraged to vote.

This reminds me of that knucklehead Kris Kobach and the Presidential Advisory Committee for Electoral Integrity. Otherwise known as the Voter Fraud folks. They never found any fraud because they were looking in the wrong places. All they had to do was look in the Republican backyard.

It turns out there is voter fraud, of a sort, but it is coming from the Republicans, the party that howled about millions of illegals voting, that accuse Democrats of wanting to let illegals vote (none of the Democrats I know want illegals to vote--if you're not a citizen, you don't get to vote in our elections), that have reduced early voting, closed certain polling stations, and have everything they to make it harder to vote, at least if you're black, poor, female, a student. On second thought, perhaps it is less voter fraud, which I think of as being committed by the voter, as election stealing by the party in charge, by seeking to ensure that absentee ballots wouldn't be counted.

Breaking News — after long and desperate search, massive voter fraud is found in Republican pocket.

Let's be very clear about this: the NCGOP, aided and abetted by the Art Pope's machine and the nefarious Koch Brothers, are more of a real threat to democratic institutions in the Tar Heel State than is ISIS or North Korea. Their attempts to undermine democracy by gerrymandering, voter suppression, and voter fraud is truly disgusting. This Harris incident is just routine politics for the NCGOP.

The lawyer Steve?

Well, well, well. There IS voter fraud. And it turns out to be the Republican Party committing it.

This part of North Carolina is known for crooked behavior -- police, politicians, any elected or appointed official. We can only hope that the outside attention given to this particular situation leads to a fair outcome.

It would seem, then, that Republican complaints about voter fraud are more along the line of being sure that Democrats aren't using the fraudulent techniques too. Very interesting, since this is the first real case of likely voter fraud, involving many voters rather than just a few, of this volume that is well documented. If proven, Republicans will need to point fingers at themselves as the problem.

How Dowless, a convicted felon, got elected in the first place and was allowed to do this, is a mystery

So, finally, after all these years of Republicans claiming rampant voter fraud, we have our first example. See, they were right!

I grew up in Raleigh in the 60’s, and moved out in 79 to get away from the blatant racism. I have just moved back in order to add my voice and one vote for change. I hope it gets counted.

Right now the question isn't so much about whether Harris gets to go to Congress. It's whether he avoids a jail cell. He must be something like the 4th or 5th GOP House Representative elected who has been, or will soon be, charged with a crime.

Funny how the only actual voter fraud in America seems to be coming from the Republican Party. Aren't they the ones who claim to be protecting us from this kind of hanky-panky?