RALEIGH, N.C. _ While winners of 2018 House races were being sworn into a new Congress in Washington on Thursday, Republican Mark Harris met with staff from the North Carolina state board of elections in Raleigh.
Harris and two attorneys met with state board Executive Director Kim Westbrook Strach and Chief Investigator Joan Fleming for nearly two hours Thursday morning, the board said in a news release. Earlier in the day, Harris filed a motion with the Wake County Superior Court urging the court to compel the board to certify his election.
Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes, according to unofficial results, in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District, which stretches from Charlotte to Fayetteville along the South Carolina border. But the state board twice declined to certify his election, citing voting irregularities and possible absentee ballot fraud in Bladen and Robeson counties.
The nine-member board has been declared unconstitutional and dissolved. And no new board will take shape until the end of January.
"We believe that, again, that I should be certified," he said. "We don't believe that the number of ballots in question would change the outcome of this election."
David Freedman, Harris' attorney, said his client should be in Washington being sworn in with members of the new Congress.
"We think there should be no reason to doubt the legitimacy of the outcome," Harris said.
