U.S. Election Fraud is Real—And It Is Being Ignored

Mark Harris was riding high on Election Day in 2018. The Republican candidate for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District had beaten his Democratic opponent in a very close race. Next stop: the U.S. House of Representatives.

Or so it seemed. Harris had won by 905 votes, a margin of only 0.3 percent of all ballots cast. The state’s Board of Elections refused to certify the results, though, when evidence surfaced of “concerted fraudulent activities related to absentee by-mail ballots,” including illegal vote harvesting by a political consultant and his associates.

The board’s investigation turned up so many cases of fraudulent activity, including forged signatures and widespread ballot harvesting, that a new election was ordered in the congressional race as well as two local races. A new candidate, Dan Bishop, took Harris’ place and went on to win the seat in a special election last year.

A Wake County grand jury, meanwhile, indicted the political consultant on charges of felony obstruction of justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice, possession of absentee ballots, and perjury.