House GOP: Move to a different state if you have a pre-existing condition
From TalkingPointsMemo:
“People can go to the state that they want to live in,” Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-NC) told reporters Tuesday morning when asked if people with pre-existing conditions could be charged much more under the American Health Care Act.
“States have all kinds of different policies and there are disparities among states for many things: driving restrictions, alcohol, whatever,” he continued. “We’re putting choices back in the hands of the states. That’s what Jeffersonian democracy provides for.”
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Under the GOP’s amended bill, states could also seek waivers to Obamacare’s essential health benefits rule, allowing insurers to sell bare bones plans that don’t cover things like prescription medicine, emergency room visits, or maternity care.
Republicans in North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District need to come together, coalesce behind a candidate and begin raising money if they are going to take what should be a safe Republican seat away from an eager Dan McCready. Instead, they’re threatening to sue one another.
The Ninth District was the stomping grounds of a concerted ballot harvesting program spearheaded by one McCrae…
Evidence has emerged that a North Carolina Republican candidate sought out a known fraudster — who his own son warned him against hiring — to run his absentee ballot program in a House race being investigated for election fraud.
Emily Singer at Shareblue:
Things just got way, way worse for North Carolina Republican Mark Harris.
New evidence emerged on Thursday at an ongoing hearing before the North Carolina State Board of Elections that shows Harris specifically sought out a known election fraudster to run the absentee ballot program in his 2018 House campaign.
That campaign is now under serious investigation from the elections board, which is using the hearing to determine whether it’s necessary to hold new elections in the state’s 9th Congressional District because of a massive fraud scheme carried out by a consultant, McCrae Dowless, who worked for Harris’ campaign.
The new evidence, an email in which Harris seeks advice on hiring Dowless to run his absentee ballot program, emerged just before Harris took the stand at the hearing.
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Even Harris’ own son warned his father against hiring Dowless — a fact that emerged at an explosive day of witness testimony on Wednesday.
Yet Harris went ahead and hired Dowless anyway.
Harris claimed during the hearing that he was promised Dowless’ operation was legal and above board, and felt comfortable hiring him.
Lawyers for Harris’ opponent, as well as members of the elections board, were incensed that the Harris campaign’s legal team would withhold an email like this, which had been subpoenaed and was clearly relevant to the hearing at hand.
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Harris lead McCready by just 905 votes in the last official tally. But elections officials refused to certify those results — and as more evidence emerges, it looks increasingly likely that they never will.
In the wake of the scandal, North Carolina could become a model for election integrity
In the wake of the scandal, North Carolina could become a model for election integrity
Election fraud has been happening in counties around the state for years but law enforcement generally ignored it, according to an article in the News & Observer.Most of it took place in rural counties and centered around local elections, even if some of it bled over into the state and federal ones. State and local law enforcement officials were more interested in bigger fish like council of…
Republican Mark Harris’s narrow win over Democrat Dan McCready is being investigated due to allegations of irregularities with absentee ballots.
Sarah Jones at NYMag’s Daily Intelligencer:
North Carolina Republicans are very concerned about voter fraud. “Committing voter fraud is easy in our state,” the state’s Republican lieutenant governor, Dan Forest, said in a video released in October. As WRAL News reported at the time, Forest’s presentation outlined ways to cast a fraudulent ballot in the state. “Just for fun, here’s one way an organized group could commit voter fraud in North Carolina,” he said.
Just for fun, here’s another way to commit voter fraud in North Carolina. You could — theoretically, of course — hire someone who would coordinate an effort to falsify absentee ballots. That’s the allegation roiling the state’s Ninth Congressional District, where Republican Mark Harris defeated his Democratic challenger, Dan McCready, by just 905 votes. For all the GOP’s hand-wringing over voter fraud in North Carolina, one of their own candidates has been caught up in a scandal over voting irregularities.
Sworn affidavits submitted by Bladen County voters paint a bizarre picture. The Washington Post reports that in one affidavit, a voter, Datesha Montgomery, said that a woman came to her home in October, explaining she was collecting ballots in the area. But Montgomery hadn’t completed her ballot. “I filled out two names on the ballot, Hakeem Brown for Sheriff and Vince Rozier for board of education,” Montgomery wrote. “She stated the others were not important. I gave her the ballot and she said she would finish it herself. I signed the ballot and she left. It was not sealed up at any time.” Another affidavit claimed that a Bladen County man named Leslie McCrae Dowless had acknowledged “doing absentee” for the Harris campaign and said that he would receive $40,000 if Harris won. “You know I don’t take checks. They have to pay me cash,” the affidavit quotes Dowless as saying.
Voting experts, meanwhile, have greeted Bladen County’s absentee results with skepticism. In the county’s Bladenboro 2 precinct, only four of the 159 ballots cast by mail were submitted by African-American voters. Absentee ballots were requested by another 156 voters, but they never submitted them, Gerry Cohen, an election-law expert who used to work for the state legislature, told the Post. “There are patterns that are at odds with behavior of North Carolina voters. It’s a whole series of suspicious events,” Cohen added.
The state board of elections has sensibly decided to hold off on certifying the district’s results — meaning that although Harris is in D.C. to attend congressional orientation, there is some chance that he won’t actually take office in January. This possibility hinges on the results of the state’s investigation, and whether the number of suspicious ballots proves greater than his margin over McCready. Harris, a Baptist pastor, had defeated Republican incumbent Representative Robert Pittenger in the primary, and proved a controversial candidate in the run-up to the general election. In August, the Charlotte News and Observer reported Harris “questioned whether careers were the ‘healthiest pursuit’ for women” in a 2013 sermon. Roll Call previously reported that Harris has also called on women to submit to their husbands, saying in one sermon:
You see wives, please hear me this morning. The message is not from your husband to submit, the message is from the Lord. You’re not to ever submit ma’am because your husband demands it, but you do it because the Lord ordained it. Now ladies, you can rebel against that command, but just please understand you’re not rebelling against your husband.
Harris’s earlier victory over Pittenger is under scrutiny, too, as Splinter noted; the state is also investigating irregular absentee ballots in the primary race. Harris had defeated Pittenger by only 825 votes. Of the 456 absentee votes cast, 437 were for Harris — an unusually lopsided result.
North Carolina Republicans, meanwhile, are now hard at work at creating a voter ID law approved by voters in November. They say the measure will cut down on voting fraud.
