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The filing comes one day after a three-judge court refused the suspension of the state's council of elections in its present form. The committee charged with investigating the charges in the 9th district should be dissolved Friday at noon.
The board refused to certify that Harris was the winner of November due to evidence of irregularities in the counting of ballots by mail and information about a fraudulent scheme run by a Republican agent engaged by the Harris campaign.
Election of 2018 by 905 votes against Democratic candidate Dan McCready.
McCready's campaign did not immediately postpone CNN's request for comment.
In its petition, the Harris campaign wrote to the board of directors that it "has no knowledge of irregularities or other numbers sufficient to change the outcome of the elections in the 9th district." [19659002] In the absence of a hearing scheduled for Friday morning, it is unlikely that the board of directors will get the application.
I If the board does not certify it, Harris told WBT radio in Charlotte that he was ready to continue the fight in court.
Although the council is about to dissolve, board members may continue to work on the investigation, but they will not do so. to be able to issue subpoenas, to hold hearings or to call new elections, "said General Counsel Joshua Lawson.
The board had scheduled a hearing no later than December 21, but later set a date. for January 11, 2019.
The current council structure had been abolished before the 2018 elections, but the court had so far postponed the implementation of this order.
In their decision on Thursday, the judges stated that the board had not complied with the requirements. previous court orders and the fact that they had not provided sufficient information on the reasons why the hearing had been delayed.
The composition of the electoral committee is also uncertain. New law requires Democratic Governor Roy Cooper to appoint a new board of directors, but not until January 31, 2019.
Cooper announced Friday that he would appoint a temporary board of trustees, according to the old rules, until the end of January. State Republicans said Cooper did not have the power to do so and planned to challenge that in court as well. The party also said that it would not accept any appointment to the new board that Cooper is trying to establish.
If the state election committee can corroborate the growing evidence of irregularities in the 9th district constituency, it is expected that it will call new elections early in 2019
State election officials are currently examining the evidence of postal voting. Fraud allegedly orchestrated by Leslie McRae Dowless, whose efforts potentially helped Harris to win Bladen County.
"To date, state board investigative staff has conducted more than 100 interviews and is actively involved in the review of more than 182,000 pages of documents produced in response to 12 Subpoenas issued by the state board, "Joshua Malcolm, the Democratic chairman of the board, said in an affidavit filed in court on Dec. 21.
Harris denied any wrongdoing. In his interview with WBT radio, Harris defended his decision to hire Dowless, claiming that the GOP operator had been recommended to him by political leaders in whom he trusted the state.
Harris specifically stated that Dowless claimed not to collect or harvest. , "the postal votes, what Dowless is accused of doing and is an illegal practice in North Carolina."
He also advanced a conspiracy theory that the electoral committee, composed of both Republican and Democrat members , is deliberately kept information to prevent him from winning the elections.
"Have they decided to sit on it and wait, and they would see and in a way or of another if $ 11 million and Dan McCready could not beat Mark Harris, would that be an insurance policy that they would play to get a start again? "Harris asked." I would hate to think we have a agency in our state government that would work with this kind of sinister direction, but I tell you that the facts are the facts, they sat on it and we could have known what was going on there and I just think it's sad. "
The Republican Party of the State Applauds the Decision of Mr. Harris's Campaign to File a Petition in Court.
" It is important to note that no serious evidence of certain The most disturbing allegations North Carolina Republican Party President Robin Hayes said in a statement Friday that the widespread destruction of ballots has already materialized. "There is simply no concrete evidence that even the erroneous treatment of certain ballots by mail represented a change of more than a thousand votes in this race."
CNN's Gregory Krieg contributed to this report.
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