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NEWS: Mark Harris, in his testimony before the North Carolina State Elections Council this afternoon, said that a new election was warranted in the hotly contested race, that Harris had conducted with 905 votes. Earlier on Thursday, Harris had said he knew nothing of a so-called vote-alteration scheme run by an agent that he had hired to work in his 2018 campaign.
This is a story in development and will be updated.
RALEIGH, N.C. – Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris said that a new election in North Carolina's 9th congressional district was warranted after allegations of falsification of the vote.
In his testimony before the North Carolina Elections Council, Harris, Mr. Harris said that a new election was warranted in the highly contested race, which Harris conducted with 905 votes. He stated that he was recovering from an infection that resulted in sepsis and two strokes, and that he realized that it was not prepared for the "rigors" of this hearing.
"I think that a new election should be called," said Harris, causing gasps in the Raleigh hearing room. "It has become clear to me that public confidence in the 9th district has been undermined to such an extent that a new election is warranted."
Earlier on Thursday, Harris had said he knew nothing of a so-called vote-alteration scheme run by an agent he had hired to work in his campaign of 2108.
Harris's testimony comes in the aftermath of the testimony of his son, John Harris, federal prosecutor, about the warnings he had given his father during phone calls and e-mails telling him that he had broken the law in a previous election.
In his own testimony Thursday, Elder Harris stated in his interviews with reporters that he did not know that he was aware of the red flags regarding the alleged tactics of the officer, regardless of what his son would have told him in the spring of 2017.
Harris said he did not follow his son's advice in part because John Harris was only 27 years old at the time. He added that the youngest of the Harris was "a bit critical and had a bit of arrogance and a few other things, and I'm very proud of him and I love him with all my heart."
On the fourth day of dramatic hearings, Harris, a Baptist minister, spoke after allegations of widespread election fraud in the 9th congressional district, the country's last undecided congressional race. Harris leads 905 votes against Democrat Dan McCready.
Harris said he hired the agent, Leslie McCrae Dowless, on the advice of a number of Republican friends and colleagues. He stated that he believed in Dowless when he proposed to run a mail-order voting program for Mr. Harris's campaign.
Harris's testimony follows the dramatic start of Thursday's hearing, where State Board of Elections General Counsel Josh Lawson releases a letter reprimanding campaign lawyers for failing to deliver e-mails between Harris and his office. son up to 15 minutes before John Harris. appeared on Wednesday.
"The timing of the disclosure of your information raises significant and material concerns about the compliance and candor of the committee before and during the hearing," Lawson wrote. He added that the later testimony of John Harris "strongly suggests" that the explanation of the campaign – that the request for emails was incomplete – "was not accurate".
Lawson also asked Harris if he had conversations this week describing his understanding that email exchanges with his son would not be part of the evidence to be presented to the hearing. Harris said he did not remember – three times to Lawson and once to Marc Elias, Harris's Democratic Opponent's lawyer, Dan McCready.
After answering Elias, Harris's lawyer, David Freedman, stood up abruptly and asked Bob Cordle, chairman of the board, if he could go to council privately.
Before the break for the closed session, Mr. Harris explained to the witness stand how he met Dowless, 63, from Bladen County, at the center of an alleged ploy. alteration of the vote that left the ninth district in limbo. since November, when the jury refused to certify a winner and launched an investigation instead. The district stretches along the border between South Carolina, Charlotte and rural eastern North Carolina.
Dowless was a "good old boy" who "ate, slept and drank" politics and that had been recommended to him by a former state judge, Harris said. He met Dowless in 2017 in a local furniture store in the 9th district and the two, along with other Republicans, were sitting on sofas in the store's showroom so Dowless could describe his operation of postal vote.
Harris had heard that Dowless was responsible for the majority of votes cast during the 2016 Republican primary poll for Todd Johnson, whom Harris had lost to incumbent President Robert Pittenger. Harris still knew he had lost to Pittenger with so few votes and was convinced that if he had hired Dowless that year, he would have won.
"I turned to McCrae and said," What makes you so special? What are you doing? Harris recalls.
Harris stated that Dowless had explained to him that his operation was strictly legal. He hired workers who would collect voter application forms, then return once the ballots were sent and help voters fill out and mail the ballots. "We do not touch the ballots," said Harris. Collecting or filling another elector's ballot is a crime in North Carolina.
Harris's testimony sparked skepticism from some council members. He was asked how Dowless paid its workers for each submitted voting request form – and whether it should have triggered a red flag.
Harris claimed to have very little knowledge of the inner workings of his campaign. The latter, according to him, was mainly managed by his campaign consultant, Andy Yates, from the Red Dome group. Yates finished two days of testimony on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, young Harris, now 29, said he had advised his father when he planned to use Dowless to run his mail-in voting program during the 2018 congressional race. He expressed similar concerns to Yates, he said. Mark Harris hired Dowless despite his son's concerns.
At one point in his testimony, John Harris's voice broke and his father cried.
"I thought what he was doing was illegal and I was right," said John Harris about Dowless. He added, "I had no reason to believe that my father really knew it, or that my mother or any other campaigner knew of it. I think Dowless told them he was not doing it that way and they believed him. "
The investigators also shared an email between father and son in which the youngest Harris had written: "A good test is to find out if you are comfortable with the complete process that he uses and who is broadcast on news. "
Young Harris told the board of directors on Wednesday that he had started studying mail-order ballot counts in the 9th district in June 2016, when his father had narrowly lost the Republican primary.
John Harris explained that he had searched the numbers and found that the ballot papers posted for Johnson had arrived "in batches" in the county electoral offices – which he said suggested that they had been illegally collected by the agents of the campaign.
Harris said that he had then spoken to his father about his suspicions. Dowless, who declined to testify this week to avoid self-incrimination, is accused of doing so in the 2018 cycle – hiring a team of workers to collect, sign, falsify, and illegally ballots.
Yates and Harris denied knowledge of these alleged tactics. But in another 2016 email posted on Wednesday, both Harrises discussed this year's anomalies, as well as the irony that Dowless had filed a complaint with election officials that Democrats would have used similar tactics in Bladen County.
"I imagine that he did not like the Dems doing business!" Writes the elder Harris.
In a television interview in early January, Mark Harris told Spectrum News in Raleigh that information, including one in the Washington Post that he was warned of Dowless's alleged tactics, was false.
[N.C. congressional candidate sought out aide, despite warnings over tactics]
In his testimony on Wednesday, the young Harris also questioned the account of Yates, whose political consulting firm had paid Dowless on behalf of the campaign.
John Harris said that he was surprised to hear of the little control exercised by Yates to make sure that Dowless was rendering the services for which he was being paid. He was also surprised to hear Yates say he was shocked to learn of Dowless's alleged tactics once the investigation opened in November.
"Mr. Yates said he was shocked and disturbed by the testimony," said Younger Harris. "I was disturbed.
Harris said that after warning Yates of Dowless, "Andy assured me," Yes, we will make sure that he will do what he says he's going to do. " . "
John Harris emphasized his belief that his parents did not know about Dowless's alleged tactics, but he also acknowledged in heartbreaking testimony that they "wanted" to believe in Dowless – perhaps against their better judgment.
Young Harris asked the Elections Committee if he could make some concluding remarks once the lawyers had finished their interrogations.
"I love my father and I love my mother," he said. "I certainly have no vendetta against them, no family account to settle. I think they made mistakes in this process and that they certainly did things differently from what I would have done them. "
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