michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today: For months, allegations of fraud have swirled around a congressional race in North Carolina’s Ninth District. But the Republican at the center of the controversy has held on. Why he’s finally giving up. It’s Wednesday, February 27.

archived recording

As directed by law, the clerk of the House has prepared the official role of the representatives-elect.

alan blinder

So it was January 3rd and hundreds and hundreds of members of Congress are coming to Capitol Hill to be sworn in for the new Congress after a really bruising midterm election.

archived recording

Certificates of election, 434 seats in the 116th Congress have been received by the clerk of the House.

alan blinder

But as everyone shows up on Capitol Hill, there’s one seat everyone knows is going to remain empty.

archived recording

The clerk has not received a certificate of election for the Ninth District of the state of North Carolina.

alan blinder

And that’s the House seat from North Carolina’s Ninth District.

michael barbaro

Alan Blinder covers the American South for The Times.

alan blinder

The story of that seat, and why it was empty on January 3, is this extraordinary tale of election fraud, the scale of which we’ve not really seen very often in American politics.

michael barbaro

So Alan, take us back to when this story starts. Who was supposed to fill that seat in North Carolina?

alan blinder

Well, that depends on who you ask. If you ask the Republicans, Mark Harris was destined for that seat in Congress.

archived recording (mark harris)

And I want you to know that — this evening — that this is a journey that really has been two years in the making. But I’m glad to report tonight, it’s just getting started.

alan blinder

Mark Harris, on election night, thinks that he has managed to pull off a victory against Dan McCready, who was one of the most prized Democratic candidates of last year. He thought he had won the election by about 905 votes.

archived recording (mark harris)

I’m going to Washington to be your voice in the Ninth Congressional District.

alan blinder

So Mark Harris goes on to Washington, goes to new member orientation. But back in North Carolina, people are starting to think that some of the numbers in his election look a little fishy. And people just started to wonder, is there something that went wrong in this campaign that let Mark Harris win?

archived recording

Now at 10, an election controversy — allegations of fraud in one of the country’s tightest races.

michael barbaro

And what exactly seemed off about his election? What was it that was so fishy?

alan blinder

Frankly, a lot of things seemed off. There was a concern about the number of absentee ballots, especially in one county.

archived recording

When Mark Harris declared victory, he sang Bladen County’s praises.

archived recording (mark harris)

Thank God for Bladen and Union counties. [CHEERING]

archived recording

One month later, no one is laughing or applauding as state investigators look into the results of the Ninth District election.

alan blinder

Mark Harris won something like 60-some odd percent of absentee ballots in Bladen County. And what was unusual about that is Republicans accounted for less than 20 percent of the absentee ballots. So he won well more than half while registered Republicans accounted for less than a fifth of those ballots.

michael barbaro

And that math doesn’t quite make any sense, because it would mean he was winning non-Republican absentee ballots, which is surprising.

alan blinder

Something smelled really wrong to a lot of people looking at those numbers.

michael barbaro

And how does Mark Harris explain all this after the election?

alan blinder

He says he won it fair and square. He says he ran an aggressive campaign. That’s what Republicans say. They say that they made a really concerted push. They knew it would be a tight race. And they pulled out all the stops and were looking for votes wherever they could find them.

michael barbaro

Hm.

alan blinder

Well, the state isn’t so sure that Mark Harris is the clear winner. And they start digging into what happened. And meanwhile in North Carolina, a bunch of us reporters are driving around, looking for anything we can find about what might have happened. We’re knocking on doors. We’re asking people, have you ever met anyone who came to collect your ballot, for example. And it doesn’t take long before we start to learn about a man named McCrae Dowless.

archived recording

We’re learning more about the man at the center of the District Nine election fraud investigation and how he operates.

alan blinder

McCrae Dowless is a longtime political operative in Bladen County. He’s in his 60s now.

archived recording

This is McCrae Dowless. Here’s a picture of him on the left.

alan blinder

He’s rail-thin. He’s pretty slight in stature. Smokes a lot of cigarettes.

archived recording

Mark Harris is not the only candidate that Dowless is connected to.

alan blinder

He was known as the elections guru, if you will, in Bladen County. He actually got a certificate for that once.

michael barbaro

A certificate saying that he’s, essentially, the guy who knows the system best?

alan blinder

He’s the guy who knows where to find votes in Bladen County.

archived recording

He wanted me go out and get the absentee ballots.

alan blinder

And he had a long track record of working with Republicans and Democrats on their elections and helping people really scrounge up absentee votes to come up with winning margins.

archived recording

Mr. Dowless is accused of wrongdoing — basically using workers to forge signatures and collect ballots, which you can’t even do in North Carolina.

alan blinder

As reporters are digging into McCrae Dowless’s past, we realize very quickly that he’s not just your run of the mill political operative.

archived recording

Dowless is part of the 2014 McVicker campaign, but was paid in a way that would not show up on campaign finance reports.

alan blinder

He’s a guy with felony convictions for fraud and perjury.

archived recording

In another document from the suit, Dowless himself confirms he worked for the 2014 campaign to get out the vote.

alan blinder

He’s a guy who’s been investigated in the past for his political work, but was never prosecuted. And it was not long after that that Mark Harris hired McCrae Dowless and said, I want you to help me find absentee voters in Bladen County and help me win an election next year. At that point, we started to put the pieces together. And we started to realize that there was probably something very wrong that had happened in Bladen County. But we didn’t know exactly what had happened until last week. So last week, I went up to North Carolina for a hearing, where the state was going to start showing its evidence of what it found during this investigation.

archived recording

Let’s start with by thanking the North Carolina State Bar for allowing us to use their building to conduct this hearing.

alan blinder

So the hearing room is packed on Monday morning. This courtroom where lawyers usually go when they’re in trouble, but it was one of the bigger courtrooms in Raleigh. So we all crowd in there, waiting to hear for the first time what on earth the state has come up with.

archived recording

By statute to the opening of each meeting, we must read a conflict-of-interest statement and check to see if any members —

alan blinder

Mark Harris himself is in the courtroom, sitting among his lawyers. And the first person to speak is the executive director of the Elections Board.

archived recording

We believe the evidence that we will provide today will show that a coordinated, unlawful and substantially resourced absentee ballot scheme operated in the 2018 general election —

alan blinder

And she immediately says that investigators had found an unlawful and coordinated effort to try to influence absentee voting.

archived recording

Witness is yours, [INAUDIBLE]. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, Miss Britt.

alan blinder

One of the state’s star witnesses, a woman named Lisa Britt, takes the stand. And Lisa Britt is the stepdaughter of McCrae Dowless. And she worked for him during the 2018 campaign.

archived recording

Did Mr. Dowless asked you to go out and request absentee ballots from potential voters.

archived recording (lisa britt)

He did.

alan blinder

And she starts to describe how McCrae Dowless’s operation worked.

archived recording (lisa britt)

Bladen County is a poor county. So we were actually going out with absentee request forms to give people the opportunity, so everybody would have the opportunity to vote —

alan blinder

It just becomes this catalog of crime.

archived recording (lisa britt)

Some of them we did. On some — it may have been people who had voted in previous elections or whatever. So we would fill out the top part.

alan blinder

They would collect absentee ballots. They would fill in absentee ballots. They would forge signatures as witnesses for absentee ballots.

archived recording

Did he provide you with instructions about not admitting to collecting ballots?

archived recording (lisa britt)

Yes, sir.

alan blinder

And the operation was designed to make sure Mark Harris had enough absentee votes to win the election. It was an effort that was rooted in fraud, rooted in misconduct. And it was supposed to put Mark Harris over the top.

archived recording (speaker 1)

And I would excuse Miss Britt.

archived recording (speaker 2)

Call Kelly Hendrix.

alan blinder

So as the hearing goes on, we hear from more and more witnesses. We hear from another woman who worked for McCrae Dowless.

archived recording

[INAUDIBLE].

alan blinder

We hear from local elections officials.

archived recording

Would you state your name, please?

archived recording (sandra dowless)

Sandra Dowless.

alan blinder

We hear from a consultant for Mark Harris.

archived recording

Ms. Strach, are you ready for your next witness, please?

alan blinder

But then there’s a big surprise.

archived recording

[INAUDIBLE] call John Harris.

alan blinder

And that’s when the state calls Mark Harris’s son, John Harris, up to the witness stand.

archived recording

Do you have an attorney here with you, even though you —

archived recording (john harris)

I do not, but I am one and am representing myself in this capacity.

alan blinder

John Harris is a 29-year-old lawyer for the Department of Justice. He is one of the single most self-assured lawyers I think I’ve ever seen. And he comes up to the witness stand, and he starts to tell a really remarkable and compelling story.

archived recording (john harris)

I expressed my concerns, based on everything that I did know up to that point.

alan blinder

For weeks and weeks and weeks, Mark Harris had been denying, to just about everyone who would listen, that he knew of any kind of wrongdoing involving McCrae Dowless, that he had no reason to be suspicious of him. And he actually admitted that he had been the person responsible for hiring McCrae Dowless. But then John Harris gets up on the witness stand. And the state pulls out an email that John Harris sent to his father the day after Mark Harris met with McCrae Dowless.

archived recording (john harris)

This is an email that I sent to my father. And I copied my mother.

alan blinder

The email was John Harris, the son, telling his father that McCrae Dowless is trouble. That he had concerns about whether his operation was on the up and up.

archived recording (john harris)

And so that’s what this meant, to summarize how these numbers seemed so off.

alan blinder

I think we realized we were watching a political collapse happen right in front of us.

archived recording (john harris)

I just want to say this in closing. I love my dad. And I love my mom. O.K.?

alan blinder

And I think Mark Harris may have realized that, too.

archived recording (john harris)

I think that they made mistakes in this process. And they certainly did things differently than I would have done them.

alan blinder

Mark Harris was crying from where he was watching all of this. I mean, he was weeping as he watched his son testify.

archived recording (john harris)

And frankly, when I’m coming out of this process, I’m just left thinking that we can all do a lot better than this. And that’s all I have, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

archived recording

Thank you. You are excused. Would you state your name, please?

archived recording (mark harris)

I’m Mark Harris.

alan blinder

And then Mark Harris himself takes the stand. And his day begins as a disaster, and it gets worse.

archived recording

You didn’t ask Dowless, are you harvesting ballots?

archived recording (mark harris)

Well, he had made that clear, that he was not.

alan blinder

He starts telling the Elections Board about how he had, in fact, hired McCrae Dowless. But that he didn’t know that McCrae Dowless or any of his workers were doing anything wrong.

archived recording (mark harris)

Well, I had no reason to hide this email. In fact, it was my understanding it was going to be produced.

alan blinder

Eventually, Harris misleads the board with a few instances of what his critics thought was perjury.

archived recording (mark harris)

I did not consider John’s to be a warning that this was a problem and could be a real serious potential problem.

alan blinder

And the state’s lawyers realized that. And pretty quickly, it becomes clear that Mark Harris’s own lawyers realized that, too.

michael barbaro

So then what happens?

archived recording

I would ask for a short recess to have a discussion in chambers with the board.

alan blinder

His lawyer calls a recess. And there is a lot of confusion, frankly, in the courtroom over what on earth is happening.

archived recording

Take our lunch break now, then. And we’ll come back.

alan blinder

We all go to lunch. Meanwhile, there is some closed-door negotiating happening. We reconvene a little later.

archived recording

Let’s start by saying, Dr. Harris, you know you’re still under oath?

archived recording (mark harris)

Yes.

archived recording

And you’re still here voluntarily —

alan blinder

And Mark Harris comes back out to the witness stand and surprises everyone.

archived recording (mark harris)

Mr. Chairman, I have a statement that I wish to make.

alan blinder

He gets up and talks about how he’d had some medical problems.

archived recording (mark harris)

On January 18, I went to the hospital. After battling what we thought was bronchitis, I developed a severe infection that actually caused me to become septic. In the process of that illness, I experienced two strokes, from which I’m still recovering. Though I thought I was ready to undergo the rigors of this hearing and am getting stronger, I clearly am not. And I struggled this morning with both recall and confusion.

alan blinder

How he had offered what he called incorrect testimony —

archived recording (mark harris)

Through the testimony I’ve listened to over the past three days, I believe a new election should be called.

alan blinder

And then he calls for a new election.

michael barbaro

Wow.

alan blinder

Yeah.

archived recording (mark harris)

It has become clear to me that the public’s confidence in the Ninth District’s seat general election has been undermined to an extent that a new election is warranted. Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement.

michael barbaro

Mark Harris, with the lead that he has in this race, is suddenly calling for a brand new election?

alan blinder

Yeah. I sent an all-caps email to my editors.

michael barbaro

What did it say?

alan blinder

I think it was something like, Harris calls for new election.

michael barbaro

That’s concise.

alan blinder

I mean, this was not what I was planning for. I think I had told my editors that morning there was no chance this would be resolved today.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm.

alan blinder

I mean, in the courtroom, you had dozens and dozens of people who had been listening to testimony. They’ve watched Mark Harris for months say that he deserves to be a member of the United States Congress.

michael barbaro

Mm-hmm.

alan blinder

And then he just gets up and suddenly calls for a new election. It was one of those moments when you heard a lot of people gasp. It wasn’t just one person gasping. A whole bunch of us gasped.

archived recording (speaker 1)

All right. Thank you, sir. No further? I call this meeting adjourned. Thank you.

archived recording (speaker 2)

Thank you.

alan blinder

So Mark Harris leaves the room. And a bunch of TV cameras chase after him. Then this five-member Elections Board votes unanimously to have a new election. That was on Thursday afternoon. And I spent the next few days asking Republicans the big question. Will Mark Harris run again? And on Tuesday afternoon —

archived recording

Breaking news out of North Carolina, Republican Mark Harris says he will not run in a new election for the state’s Ninth District. In a statement, he said, quote, “Given my health situation, the need to regain full strength, and the timing of this surgery the last week of March, I’ve decided not to file in the new election for Congressional District Nine.”

alan blinder

He cited his health and said he would not be a candidate the next time around.

michael barbaro

So there will be a new election. But Mark Harris will not be a candidate?

alan blinder

There will be a new election. And Mark Harris will not be in it. So in the meantime, the people of the Ninth District of North Carolina won’t have any representation in Congress. And that Ninth District seat will remain empty.

michael barbaro

Alan, what have we learned from what happened in the Ninth District of North Carolina?

alan blinder

Well, we’ve gotten a really detailed playbook about how election fraud can happen in the United States. We’ve seen how absentee ballots are prone to abuse. And we’ve also seen a real embarrassment for Republicans in North Carolina and around the country. For years and years, Republicans have been sounding an alarm about the possibility of fraud at the ballot box. And for years and years, Democrats have been saying that Republicans were blowing up those worries. They were using fraud as a pretext to be able to discriminate. And now in North Carolina, we have the biggest case of election fraud in memory. And it was bankrolled by a Republican campaign. This was not voter fraud. This was election fraud — a lot of egg on a lot of people’s faces.

michael barbaro

Election fraud, not voter fraud — and why does that distinction matter, do you think, Alan?

alan blinder

Republican politicians have spent years trying to argue that individual voters are the problem when it comes to fraud in elections. What happened in North Carolina had nothing to do with individual voters. It was all about a coordinated effort to sway an election. It was a Republican campaign paying for illegal conduct. That was the problem.

archived recording (mitch mcconnell)

Now there’s a new interest in ensuring the sanctity of American elections. I’ve been focused for decades on protecting the integrity of elections.

michael barbaro

So Alan, on Tuesday morning, Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell gave a speech —

archived recording (mitch mcconnell)

Now Madam President, for years and years, every Republican who dared to call for common-sense safeguards for America’s ballots was demonized by Democrats and their allies.

michael barbaro

— in which he declared that what happened in North Carolina is, in his telling, evidence that there is, quote, “very real voter fraud happening in the country.”

archived recording (mitch mcconnell)

Now that an incident of very real voter fraud has become national news, these longstanding Democratic talking points have been really quiet. Haven’t heard much lately from the Democrats about how fraud never happens.

michael barbaro

And he said that Democrats should look at this and realize that the Republican argument is right — that there is a problem, and that they should accept it.

archived recording (mitch mcconnell)

So I’d like to welcome my friends on the left to their new realization. They’ve just discovered that this subject really matters.

alan blinder

The lesson of the Ninth District is not that fraud happens. The lesson of the Ninth District is how fraud happens. Maybe the Senate majority leader doesn’t know the difference between election fraud and voter fraud. But a lot of people on Tuesday thought he was just conflating the two and trying to misdirect and muddy the waters and make people think that what Republicans had been warning about for years happened. But it didn’t.

michael barbaro

Alan, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

alan blinder