the public s confidence in the ninth district seat general election has been undermined to an extent that a new election is warranted. reporter: republican mark harris, the candidate seeking to have his unofficial vote certified, abruptly called for a new election just moments after admitting he d not been entirely truthful under oath. now, harris, who recently suffered from two strokes, blamed that on his health. i thought i was ready to undergo the rigors of this hearing. i m getting stronger. i clearly am not. i struggled this morning with both recall and confusion. reporter: state investigators spent four days outlining what they called an unlawful coordinated absentee ballot scheme. in the middle of the alleged scheme, a political operative hand picked by harris to get out the vote. witnesses testified that dallas paid them to illegally collect witness and sometimes fill in blank races on absentee ballots.
against them, no family scores to settle. i think they made mistakes in this process, and they certainly did things differently than i would have done them. reporter: harris now credits his son s emotional testimony with changing his mind on fraud in the election. the man everyone wanted to hear from, mccray dallas, he refused to testify, but he has denied any wrongdoing. there is still an ongoing criminal investigation into the election. the attorney who represents harris opponent, democrat dan mccready, hopes people were paying attention. the ultimate takeaway is there was a massive election fraud scheme that deprived them of an honest and fair election. reporter: the board plans to set new primary and general election dates in the coming weeks. mccready has already said he plans to run again. harris campaign manager told cnn the republican needs to assess his health situation but would make a decision soon.
then they say he told them to lie or plead the fifth at the hearing this week. now, harris has consistently denied ever being warned about dallas in the past, but a surprise witness cast serious doubt on those claims, his own son. i expressed my concerns based on everything that i did know up to that point, namely my belief that he had engaged in collecting ballots in 2016. reporter: mark harris cried as his son john, assistant u.s. attorney himself, read e-mails from over the past two years where he repeatedly warned his parents that he believed dallas was involved in illegal ballot collection, even presenting what he thought was evidence from past elections but said his dad did not listen. i love my dad, and i love my mom. okay. i certainly have no venn dedett
against him for this fraud? i think he s very unlikely to run here s why. his son s testimony, you played a clip, compelling and dramatic and essentially breaks down the idea harris had been talking about since the election that he didn t know anything about dallas or the fact that dallas was involved in illegal activities because his son was warning him, not just for weeks but years that dallas was trouble. the real problem and the reason i think he may not run again is that he was also exposed the fact that he did not turn over to the investigators, the e-mails that established these conversations with his sons and then was lying on the stand under cross-examination from the lawyer representing the democratic candidate, dan mccready, that he had told his younger son that he didn t expect those e-mails to come up. sort of knowingly withholding
piece by piece from the documents obtained by investigative journalists and great investigative journalism on the ground going to the homes of the people who were part of mccray dallas operation and getting them to essentially admit exactly what they were doing and although these folks were getting paid, you know, $50, $25, to go and illegally harvest ballots, mccray dallas, who is at the top of the pyramid did get paid $140,000 over a period of months to do this operation and this isn t the only campaign he s worked on. he may be living in a 1,000 square foot apartment but seems to be doing pretty well for himself at least until he was exposed. i think there s a lot more going on and races that could have been impacted and this is the tip of the iceberg. i m sure it is.