dowless, a convicted felon, who was working for a firm hired by the republican candidate. allegedly this operative had something to doing with highly questionable absentee ballot activity. dowless personally turned in 592 of the 1,341 total absentee ballot requests in bladen county. and a set of 161 ballots obtained by cnn showed that nine people individually signed as witnesses on at least ten absentee ballots. many of those nine are loosely connected to dowless. usually the witness for an absentee ballot is the voter s family or friends and this cnn learned that more than 1,000 ballots in the race might have been destroyed. there are also allegations that republican operatives took
partially filled out ballots from voters and filled out the rest before submitting them. on top of that, cnn counts 1680 ballots requested but not returned in the 9th district. that s a lot of ballots. dowless has denied wrongdoing to the charlotte observer and harris s campaign has denied any knowledge of potentially illegal behavior that took place on his behalf. but if these allegations are true, the outcome of that race may have been impacted. and that is why as of tonight this seat is still not filled. once the allegations of fraud came to light, the state s election board did not move to certify the results. and they failed to certify the results before the board dissolved last week. and here s where it gets really tricky. the state dissolved the elections board last month as part of an ongoing and separate legal battle about its makeup. there is a new law governing the board that goes into effect at the end of the month. then the board can move to certify results. but in the mea