On Tuesday, North Carolina GOP executive director Dallas Woodhouse declared that a new election in North Carolina’s 9th District was “warranted,” but not because of widespread reports that Republican Mark Harris was aided by election fraud. Instead, Woodhouse pointed to an affidavit from a poll worker in Bladen County who said that she saw election officials tabulating the county’s early votes before Election Day, contrary to state law. Woodhouse now says that if early vote numbers were leaked before the polls were closed, there should be a new race—perhaps using this excused in a doomed effort to deflect attention from the GOP’s absentee ballot fraud scheme.
Of course, the North Carolina Republican party wouldn’t be the North Carolina Republican Party if it didn’t already have a plan in place to try and change the rules in it favor. On Tuesday, two leading GOP state legislators introduced a bill that would require a new primary if the state Board of Elections orders a new election.
Under current law, if the board mandates a do-over, that would only apply to the general election, meaning both parties would once again put forward the same nominees: Harris for the GOP, and Dan McCready for the Democrats, unless one or both moved out of state. If, alternately, the House of Representatives refuses to seat Harris and declared a vacancy, then there would be an all-new primary and general election.
However, the state GOP isn’t going to want to take the chance that the Democratic-led House will give them a chance to dump Harris. While Woodhouse maintains that Harris had no knowledge of any wrongdoing on his behalf, both local and national GOP operatives have been grumbling that Harris is “toxic.” If Republicans can wrangle a new primary, they’ll have a chance to replace Harris with a new nominee, though the taint of this scandal will be hard to wash off no matter whom they rally around.