One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy

by Carol Anderson

The North Carolina Republican Party simply dismissed the magnitude of what Dowless did on Harris’s behalf and offered, instead, that the “reality is that there aren’t enough ballots in question to change the outcome of this election.” That statement required the GOP to ignore the 1,675 unreturned absentee ballots, the hundreds completed by Dowless’s operatives and not the voters, and North Carolina law stating that if “irregularities or improprieties … taint the results of the entire election and cast doubt on its fairness” the state elections board can order a new election. Instead, the party brushed that aside and “urged the elections board to certify the results,” so that Harris with his 905-vote “victory” could take his seat in the U.S. Congress.134 Harris, of course, agreed. “There is absolutely no public evidence,” he had tweeted, “that there are enough ballots in question to affect the outcome of this race.” Nate Silver, an expert on election polling and statistics, retorted: “This is simply not true; there ARE enough ballots in question in NC-9 to potentially affect the outcome.”135 The North Carolina GOP didn’t care and threatened to sue if Harris wasn’t seated.