McCrory Claims Widespread Fraud As He Fights To Close Gap In NC Guv’s Race

FILE - In this June 24, 2016 file photo, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory speaks during a candidate forum in Charlotte, N.C. North Carolina’s Republican lawmakers have legalized needle and syringe exchange programs ... FILE - In this June 24, 2016 file photo, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory speaks during a candidate forum in Charlotte, N.C. North Carolina’s Republican lawmakers have legalized needle and syringe exchange programs across the state to combat a heroin epidemic law enforcement officials say is reaching critical levels. McCrory on Monday, July 11 approved the law despite objections from some conservative representatives who say such exchange programs only facilitate addictions. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton) MORE LESS
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Still trailing his Democratic challenger by about 5,000 votes, Gov. Pat McCrory (R) on Thursday announced 50 new elections complaints alleging that votes were cast by people who were either dead, convicted felons, or had already voted.

The ballot-counting in the hard-fought race is now in its second week, with ballot challenges and provisional ballot tabulating as McCrory tries to make up the gap on Democratic state Attorney General Roy Cooper.

“Now we know why Roy Cooper fought so hard against voter ID and other efforts to combat voter fraud as attorney general,” Russell Peck, McCrory’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “With each passing day, we discover more and more cases of voting fraud and irregularities. We intend to make sure that every vote is properly counted and serious voter fraud concerns are addressed before the results of the election can be determined.”

The campaign said that the complaints were filed by registered voters, asking for county elections boards “to void anywhere between 100 to 200 ballots cast by suspected felons, dead people and double voters.”

With McCrory trailing Cooper by about 5,000 votes, it does not appear that the complaints announced by the McCrory campaign Thursday could swing the election in his favor.

Cooper’s campaign charged on Thursday that McCrory was trying to undermine the election results.

“Governor McCrory lost in last week’s election. But while Roy Cooper’s margin of victory has continued to grow, the McCrory Administration is delaying certification of these results with a failure to comply with the State Board of Elections’ deadline. This is unacceptable. Both the McCrory campaign and Administration are seeking to undermine the results of an election they lost. It’s time to certify these results and confirm Roy Cooper’s victory,” Cooper campaign spokesman Ford Porter said in a statement.

Republicans had previously filed additional complaints about ballots. The state GOP filed a complaint calling for the recount of 94,000 early voting ballots in Durham County, where data were entered manually late on Election Day due to machine issues.

The McCrory campaign also said on Thursday that up to 12 complaints would be filed about absentee ballots, though not all were filed by Thursday afternoon, according to the Charlotte Observer. The campaign alleged in a Thursday email that groups that received funding from the state Democratic Party “paid individuals to fill out and witness hundreds of fraudulent absentee ballots for Democrats.”

County election boards are also still sorting through 60,000 provisional ballots, determining whether they should be counted. The deadline to complete that process is Friday, but officials have indicated that they might not be finished by then, according to Raleigh television station WRAL. When residents are not on the voter rolls but claim they have registered or changed their address at the Department of Motor Vehicles, they are able to fill out a provisional ballot and officials must then determine whether they attempted to register. As of Thursday, some election officials were still waiting on information from the DMV, according to WRAL. A spokesman for the state board of elections told WRAL that usually about one third to a half of provisional ballots are deemed valid.

Correction: The original version of this story incorrectly stated that election workers counted more than 90,000 ballots by hand late on election tonight. The election workers had to manually enter data from ballot tabulators’ paper tapes because they were unable to read data from memory cards. We regret the error.

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  1. Does this mean Donald didn’t win North Carolina due to widespread fraud?

  2. God love 'im. He did EVERYTHING to rig the election and it STILL DIDN’T WORK so his brain goes to ‘they MUST have rigged things better than me!’ Isn’t it TIME we took our country back voters?

  3. elections are SO unfair because someone has to lose…

  4. nope

    Trump won on account of Democrats being asleep at the wheel.

  5. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there was widespread fraud in NC - after all, Trump won.

    That said, after tilting the playing field so hard to the right that even Cheetoh Jesus could get elected, it’s hilarious that McCrory is still losing anyway, and astonishing that he has the effrontery to complain about fraud given all his voter suppression efforts.

    I mean, how much must you suck if you couldn’t get re-elected as a Republican governor in a state that voted for Donald Fucking Trump?

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