We finally start to see some evidence of voter fraud here in my congressional district. Unfortunately, the voter protection measures put in place by the Republican state congress do nothing to prevent this kind of fraud.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/05/polit...aud/index.html
Local political scientist Michael Bitzer has really dug into the data to see what happened with all four types of voting (absentee-mail, absentee-early voter, election day voter, provisional ballot) here:Investigators are examining whether Leslie McCrae Dowless, a longtime Bladen County operative who worked for a consultant to the Harris campaign, and a group of people loosely connected to him gathered unsealed absentee ballots, marked those ballots for their candidate, sealed them and signed as witnesses. North Carolina requires witnesses to sign absentee ballots. Usually, those witnesses are family members or friends and ballots are not supposed to be handled by a third party.
They are also investigating the possibility that absentee ballots were gathered in areas considered to be supportive of McCready but never turned in.
http://www.oldnorthstatepolitics.com...tested-CD.html
What is interesting about this is that minority ballots, especially African American and Native American had very high rates of not being returned in some of the counties of the district. In Bladen County, they had very high rates of return with the implication of voting for Harris. In NC, like many other southern states, race can be considered a proxy for political party. So while early voters and election day voters that were minority largely favored the Democrat, absentee ballots overwhelmingly went for the Republican.
Perhaps voters in these two counties simply decided to request, but never return, their absentee by mail ballots; it may be as simple as that. It could also be that the campaigns, on both sides of the political fence, failed to motivate and/or follow-up with their ABM voters to get their ballots completed and returned; it could be as simple as that as well. Maybe it's the fact that both Bladen and Robeson voters (two rural counties) are just that different from Mecklenburg (urban) and Union (suburban) voters in having a different approach to voting; it could be as simple as that. But if there are other issues at hand than voters simply not returning their own ballots, the integrity of the voting process in the 9th Congressional District's election may be called into question.