Election 2016 is not over in North Carolina, where allegations of possible voter fraud now loom over a governor’s race that still remains too close to call.
Republican incumbent Gov. Patrick McCrory is trailing his Democrat challenger, North Carolina attorney general Roy Cooper, by some 5,000 votes out of 4.6 million votes cast. The McCrory campaign, however, is filing formal protests in a challenge to “potentially fraudulent absentee ballots cast for Roy Cooper and other Democrats in 11 additional counties,” says a campaign press release.
The campaign continues:
These protests follow the discovery of a North Carolina Democrat Party-funded political action committee which appears to have paid individuals to fill out and witness hundreds of fraudulent absentee ballots for Democrats including Roy Cooper in Bladen County.
In addition to funneling money to the Bladen County Improvement Association PAC, the North Carolina Democratic Party simultaneously transferred money to political action committees in these 11 counties. Similar absentee voting and handwriting patterns as in Bladen County have been discovered in at least one of these counties, suggesting these PACs may have been harvesting and witnessing multiple absentee ballots as well.
Fox News reports officials in Bladen County have observed “overtly similar” handwriting on hundreds of absentee ballots for a separate local supervisor’s race, the winner of which filed a formal complaint. The McCrory campaign, however, is alleging the PAC associated with the state’s Democratic Party “may have paid people to cast votes for a write-in Democrat in that race and every other Democrat on the ballot, including Cooper,” says the report.
“It appears that our worst fears have come true and this absentee ballot fraud scheme may run deeper than just Bladen County,” said Russell Peck, McCrory’s campaign manager. “Unfortunately, we may also have uncovered the real reason Roy Cooper fought so hard against efforts to prevent voter fraud as attorney general. These voter fraud concerns must be addressed before the results of the election can be finalized.”
As the Washington Post reports, Cooper declared victory the day after Election Day, with only a 0.5 percentage point lead, an announcement state Republican chairman Robin Hayes described as “rude and grossly premature.”
The local ABC affiliate says the final vote canvass is scheduled for Friday, and that the state’s board of elections is investigating possible abnormalities with the absentee ballots in Bladen County. Additionally, the State Bureau of Investigation is still engaged in a probe of an alleged mishandling of more than 1,000 provisional ballots in the county’s primary election in March.
McCrory’s campaign has also filed a formal protest over 94,000 early voting ballots that were not reported until after an equipment failure late in the evening on Election Day. Election board chairman in Durham County William Brian said the problem forced the need for manual ballot casts in his heavily Democratic county.
The governor’s campaign is also filing protests in Halifax, Edgecombe, Franklin, Guilford, Nash, Northampton, Robeson, Vance, Wake, and Warren counties, urging complete investigations into the absentee ballots and a review of witness signatures.
“Many of these counties denied citizens the right to review absentee ballot envelopes to look for similar patterns, but there are thousands of absentee ballots in these 11 counties that need to be reviewed to ensure that only lawful, valid votes are counted in this election,” says the campaign.
Radical LGBT groups boosted by President Barack Obama’s promotion of gender ideology have attacked McCrory this year over the state’s privacy-protecting HB2 law titled the “Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act.” The Obama administration claims the law, passed in March, violates the civil rights of gay and transgender individuals.
McCrory signed the privacy and public safety bill into law to replace an ordinance in Charlotte that allowed any man who simply declared himself to be a woman to use women’s restrooms. The ordinance was pushed forward by registered sex offender Chad Sevearance-Turner and national gay-advocacy groups.
Subsequently, businesses, celebrities and sports entities such as the NCAA, the NBA, and the Atlantic Coast Conference pulled their entertainment and sports events out of North Carolina to support the radical agenda.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and Equality NC had endorsed Cooper, who has refused to defend HB2 in court.
“Day after day, Pat McCrory has continued his reckless defense of the discriminatory HB2 with disregard for the very real harm inflicted on the people, reputation and economy of North Carolina,” HRC president Chad Griffin said. “As governor, Roy Cooper will work to repeal HB2, stand up for common decency and fight to pass statewide, LGBTQ-inclusive, non-discrimination protections.”
“The choice this election couldn’t be clearer,” Griffin added. “And we are proud to endorse Roy Cooper for Governor so that each and every LGBTQ person across North Carolina can finally live free from fear of discrimination.”
Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, however, has praised McCrory for his “political courage” and “moral clarity” in refusing to cave to pressure from the sports organizations, as well as celebrities and businesses that have refused to do business in North Carolina because of the HB2 law.
“He stared down the giant of the NBA and stood strong against government discrimination of private entities and for the principles of protecting privacy and safety in government buildings,” Perkins said about McCrory.
Perkins also made clear that HB2 has nothing to do with discrimination, as most in the media and gay rights advocates have portrayed it.
“My home state of Louisiana, like North Carolina, is one of 32 states in the U.S. that does not force private businesses to allow men in women’s showers, locker rooms, and restrooms,” Perkins added. “On the other hand, in New Orleans—the same as in Charlotte—the NBA will be free to divide the restrooms at its own event on the basis of self-professed “gender identity” instead of objective biological sex, if it wishes to do so.”
Perkins said that “only politics” was motivating the boycott of the state – and not real concern for transgender individuals.
According to one study of the 2010 census, the population of transgender people amounts to one in every 2,400 Americans, or 0.03 percent of the adult population. Multiple polls show that Obama’s transgender policy is very unpopular, and the failure of Hillary Clinton – who promised to continue support for radical LGBT causes – to win the White House lends further credibility to those polls.
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