Allegations of election fraud roil N.C. race, delay final result

TAR HEEL, N.C. — The Democratic chairman of North Carolina’s elections board resigned Saturday, saying he did not want his partisan views to undermine a widening investigation into alleged election fraud in the 9th Congressional District race.

Andy Penry, chairman of the nine-member State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement, said in a statement that he was stepping away to allow the investigation to continue “free of attempts at distraction and obstruction so that the truth can be revealed.”

Penry has fielded criti- cism from North Carolina Republican officials, who have pointed to his Twitter posts — which include a number of tweets highly critical of President Donald Trump — as evidence that the board’s investigation is partisan and baseless.

Penry’s decision came after the nine-member elections board of four Democrats, four Republicans and one unaffiliated voter agreed Tuesday unanimously to delay certification of results in the 9th District election amid allegations of an effort to fill in or discard absentee ballots of Democratic voters.

Republican Mark Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready in the race by only 905 votes, according to unofficial returns.

On Friday, the state board voted 7-2 to continue investigating the fraud allegations, leaving open the possibility that a new election could be called.

The state board has collected at least six sworn statements from voters in rural Bladen County who described people coming to their doors and urging them to hand over their absentee ballots, sometimes without them being filled out.