Holy fucking fuckballs! The North Carolina Board of Elections ordered a full do-over in that 9th Congressional District race. The Republican might not even run again for health reasons, where "health" = bathed in and reeking of fraud.
I understand that there probably are legal reasons why the election has to be done over, but I don't understand why it cannot simply be a forfeit. Cheaters shouldn't get do-overs.
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If they could prove the candidate was complicit, ideally, they'd be too much in jail to get a do-over, but there's always enough plausible deniability that's not really an option.
Calling a do-over is better than the thing where they throw a low-level schmuck or two under the bus and say, "Oh, well," though.
It’s also possible that the knowledge that the R candidate is a cheating cheater from Cheatsylvania will bias voters against him.
Or for him. I mean, it is the South.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
On the other hand, the Democrat probably would've won without the cheating - it's not assured, but there were most likely about 1,500 missing absentee ballots and they also tampered with some number of submitted ballots, so that's easily enough to account for Harris's 900-ish vote margin.
I grew up in a county adjacent to NC-9, so I'm familiar with some of the areas there. I've never been to Bladen County (there's not even a highway that goes through it on the way to the beach or something), but I've been to Robeson County, the other county that Harris's election fraud activities occurred.
But anyway, the dynamics of this do-over election are likely to be kind of weird. McCready is running again and I'd probably give a slight edge to him for a few reasons:
1. It was already very close in 2018, so a do-over ought to imply it's a tossup at least
2. Special elections favored Democrats by more in 2017-2018 than their 2018 general election results, and this is basically a special election
3. McCready was a good candidate, as seen by the close margin and probable deserved victory in 2018
4. GOP cheating taint is going to damage the candidate, even if their new nominee is not Harris, as it most likely will not be (Harris claims he had two strokes last month, which might've been just an excuse for his "memory problems" but regardless of his real health situation, it would be strange for him to try to run again if that's his claim)
5. With a large portion of the district being based in the Charlotte suburbs, the district might be trending towards the Democrats under Trump, since college-educated white voters do not like Trump.
And there's another difference from the pre-2019 situation that's relevant:
6. Democrats have a 5-1 majority and will soon have a 6-1 Democratic majority on the NC Supreme Court, and the relevance of this is that there are anti-gerrymandering cases going through the NC courts on the basis of the NC Constitution's "free and fair elections" guarantee, and so it is highly likely that the NC legislative and congressional maps will be redrawn by 2020. I would expect that some voter suppression laws will be challenged as well.
This do-over election will take months, so if a Republican wins, they will only hold the seat for a year before being forced to compete on new terrain, possibly much less favorable terrain or a district in which they're competing with another incumbent Republican member of Congress depending on how the districts are redrawn. I believe McCready lives in the Charlotte area, and it's likely another Democratic district can be drawn there, so he will likely be well-situated to run in 2020 if he wins. But a Republican might put a lot of effort into winning a seat only to find that they have no hope of winning reelection.
What this means for the likelihood that the Democrat/McCready will win is that the do-over election might not attract strong Republican candidates/the GOP might not prioritize recruitment much. If this were 2015, the seat would be an assured GOP win and the primary would attract a bunch of ambitious Republicans who would view winning the primary as tantamount to winning the election. But instead the general election looks like a slog and the prize is far less attractive.
Countering those points, though, I would say this:
1. Democratic special election margins might recede a bit now that Democrats control the House. Special elections are not the only way to show your "resistance" anymore and while I don't expect Democrats to be complacent for 2020, special elections might not have such a ridiculous enthusiasm gap anymore.
2. While the special election nomination is much less attractive for Republicans than the NC-9 nomination would've been in previous years, it's not concurrent with most other elections (it might be concurrent with some 2019 local elections) so members of the state legislature, for example, do not need to give up their seats to run. So the downside is just the campaign slog/the possibility of being a "loser" for future runs.
3. The district is simply a strongly Republican one, leaning 14 pts towards the GOP. So McCready did very well in the first place, and repeating that isn't guaranteed, particularly since Harris had some controversial positions/statements (basically saying women belonged in the home, for example) that made him a weaker candidate. The district has some areas that might be trending towards Democrats, but it's still not enough to simply do well, you need a very strong performance to win as a Democrat.
Overall, I'd say it's a tossup, but slightly favoring the Democrat.
I'm sure it will come as no surprise to anyone that the election fraud of Republican Mark Harris was entirely the fault of Democrats.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
To find a clue about what might have gone wrong with Georgia’s election last fall, look no further than voting machine No. 3 at the Winterville Train Depot outside Athens.
On machine No. 3, Republicans won every race. On each of the other six machines in that precinct, Democrats won every race.
The odds of an anomaly that large are less than 1 in 1 million, according to a statistician’s analysis in court documents. The strange results would disappear if votes for Democratic and Republican candidates were flipped on machine No. 3.
It just so happens that this occurred in Republican Brian Kemp’s home precinct, where he initially had a problem voting when his yellow voter access card didn’t work because a poll worker forgot to activate it. At the time, Kemp was secretary of state — Georgia’s top election official — and running for governor in a tight contest with Democrat Stacey Abrams.
The suspicious results in Winterville are evidence in the ongoing mystery of whether errors with voting machines contributed to a stark drop-off in votes recorded in the race for Georgia lieutenant governor between Republican Geoff Duncan, who ended up winning, and Democrat Sarah Riggs Amico.
As stated in the article, there is literally less than a one in a million chance that this occurred by coincidence. The Georgia election was rigged. It’s not as though IT professionals have been warning about this possibility for twenty fucking years or something.
(This story seems specifically designed to infuriate me since it sits at the nexus of my two areas of academic concentration, and it’s something I personally have been warning about for over a decade.)
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
Lookie here, you guys! It's a Mexican national voting illegally in American elections -- for Republicans.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
HBO’s Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections
Quote:
America’s current election infrastructure is, as Kill Chain explains, a prescription for disaster – an outdated, willfully naive system no more prepared for attack than four years ago.
Beyond Trump's dangerous, dishonest claims of widespread voter fraud, it's really rich because the WH website uses the case of someone trying to vote at their second home as an example of voter fraud! https://t.co/syhg4fsehhpic.twitter.com/pEIyXy89Ck
Jacob Wohl has a new "civil rights organization" that's robocalling people in Detroit telling them that their mail in votes will be used to track them down to serve old warrants and collect debts.
Jacob Wohl has a new "civil rights organization" that's robocalling people in Detroit telling them that their mail in votes will be used to track them down to serve old warrants and collect debts.
That’s as likely to suppress the red vote as much as the blue, isn’t it?
Red voters aren't afraid of in-person voting though. The pandemic is a hoax, and they aren't going to have difficulties getting to a polling station that's still open, and the racist vigilantes there will welcome them.
Covid-ridden colleges are sending kids home to infect their families and schools are reopening for in-person in some places. That will start propagating and showing up in communities in probably 3-5 weeks. It will also start getting cooler. Cases on are a down swing right now after a July surge. The fall will be worse than July.
There are many shitty places in North Carolina. Gastonia is almost uniformly acknowledged as the asshole of the state, but there is a multi-way tie for second. There's Morganton and Lincolnton and Shelby and Rocky Mount and Goldsboro. But in my heart, I know it to be Graham.
It is difficult to convey to non-North Carolinians just what a shithole Graham is. We bought a house for my MIL a couple of blocks from the Graham line a couple years ago. We are selling it and it closes this week. I am incredibly delighted never to have to go there again. It is the most hateful, racist, and small-minded little redneck dystopia. It has nothing to be proud of.
ETA: fun fact, by way of demonstration. Alamance County has its very own hate group called “Alamance County Taking Back Alamance County.” They are most recently known for their violent rallying around the tiniest little confederate statue you have ever seen out in front of the courthouse where those folks got gassed for no reason.
We are deeply concerned by reports of election irregularities, politically motivated arrests, and violence during Tanzania’s elections last week. We urge authorities to fully address concerns of irregularities and will review allegations of the use of force against civilians.
That looks like ridiculous hypocrisy but once you understand that "election irregularities" means "non-white people voting" it is in fact consistent messaging.
We are deeply concerned by reports of election irregularities, politically motivated arrests, and violence during Tanzania’s elections last week. We urge authorities to fully address concerns of irregularities and will review allegations of the use of force against civilians.
That looks like ridiculous hypocrisy but once you understand that "election irregularities" means "non-white people voting" it is in fact consistent messaging.
And "use of force against civilians" means "against our voters".
Re: Voter fraud vs. voter *registration* fraud
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