9th District hearing set for Feb. 18 | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This post appears here courtesy of the Carolina Journal, and written by the CJ Staff.

    The new State Board of Elections announced the long-awaited evidentiary hearing for the contested 9th Congressional District will take place Monday, Feb. 18, in Raleigh.

    Board spokesman Patrick Gannon said Monday the hearing will convene at 10 a.m. at the State Bar headquarters in Raleigh. The hearing is expected to last two days, but the board has reserved a hearing room for a third day in case it's needed.

    The previous Bipartisan State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement refused to certify Republican nominee Mark Harris, who ended up with a 905-vote victory over Democrat Dan McCready in the contest for the open congressional seat.

    The election results are in doubt because of allegations of ballot fraud. A host of media reports alleging mishandling or tampering with absentee ballots by contract workers for the Harris campaign led to the board's initial investigation. It had scheduled an evidentiary hearing for January 11.

    A three-judge panel of Superior Court judges in October ruled the previous board structure unconstitutional. But it let the nine-member board remain in place until November election results were certified. When the certification debate was sure to linger into 2019, in December the judges dissolved the board and the General Assembly created the new, five-member elections board.

    Gannon said documents for the hearing will be posted on the state board's online portal at this link.