COLUMBUS SHERIFF'S RACE UNDER SCRUTINY OVER POSSIBLE ABSENTEE BALLOT FRAUD: In Columbus County, campaign finance records show that Republican sheriff candidate S. Jody Greene paid political strategy firm Red Dome $2,500 for “consulting for campaign” in August. Dowless worked for Red Dome, the company has said. Greene beat the incumbent, Lewis Hatcher, a Democrat, by fewer than 40 votes. More than 300 votes in the race were cast using mail-in absentee ballots. Hatcher won 243 of those absentee votes to Greene’s 93, according to results posted on the state elections board’s website. The county elections board dismissed four complaints challenging the results in the sheriff’s race. At least two have since been appealed to the the state board. Neither Greene nor Hatcher responded to interview requests from The News & Observer. But Greene’s wife, Angie, said in an interview last week at the elections office: “We did not specifically hire McCrae Dowless. We hired Red Dome.”
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article223368620.html

GOVERNOR THREATENS TO VETO BILL THAT OBSCURES CAMPAIGN FINANCE INVESTIGATIONS: “This bill makes it harder to root out corruption in elections and campaign finance,” Cooper said at a news conference. “It actually provides more protections for politicians and others who violate campaign finance laws. These new provisions can shield wrong-doers by adding broad confidentiality requirements, limiting those who can file complaints, handcuffing investigators on how far back they can look, and requiring a reinvestigation by a second committee before evidence can be turned over to prosecutors. All of these new provisions operate to obscure the truth rather than shine a light on it.” Senate leader Phil Berger said the bill gives Cooper everything he wanted in separate elections and ethics boards and urged Cooper to sign it. Requiring confidentiality of campaign finance investigations is meant to discourage unfounded allegations, Berger told reporters.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article223202860.html

GOP LEGISLATION REQUIRING PRIMARY AN EFFORT TO BOOT HARRIS: Legislation quickly passed by North Carolina's lawmakers this week would prepare a path for Republicans to dump their nominee in a still-undecided U.S. House race marred with ballot fraud allegations. "I think (legislators are) worried that Mark Harris might be damaged goods and they want to have the opportunity to have a different Republican nominee," said Carter Wrenn, a Republican operative and consultant to former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms and others for more than 40 years. "That's how I read those tea leaves." If the state elections board decides ballot irregularities or other problems cast the true outcome into doubt and force a redo, the legislation — if allowed to go into law by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper — would require new primary elections in the 9th Congressional District race, in addition to a new general election.
https://www.wral.com/after-fraud-probe-new-primary-may-replace-gop-candidate/18068338/

GOVERNOR COOPER VETOES BURDENSOME VOTER ID BILL: In his veto message, Cooper said, “the proposed law puts up barriers to voting that will trap honest voters in confusion and discourage them with new rules, some of which haven’t even been written yet. Finally the fundamental flaw in the bill is its sinister and cynical origins: It was designed to suppress the rights of minority, poor and elderly voters. The cost of disenfranchising those voters or any citizens is too high, and the risk of taking away the fundamental right to vote is too great, for this law to take effect.” Several groups, including the ACLU, Common Cause NC, and Equality NC, encouraged Cooper to veto the voter ID bill. The Campus Vote Project of the Fair Elections Center, a voting rights group in Washington, D.C., asked Cooper this week to veto the bill because of the “absurd hurdles created” for colleges and universities that would want to provide students with IDs they could use at the polls.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article223103100.html

LETTERS TO PARENTS DETAIL REFUSAL TO GRADE PAPERS OVER SILENT SAM PLAN: More than 200 UNC-Chapel Hill faculty members have signed an open letter to students’ parents and guardians, asking them to support striking graduate student instructors and the permanent removal of the Silent Sam Confederate statue from campus. “Please contact university leaders, including Chancellor Carol Folt, Provost Bob Blouin, and Chairman of the Board Haywood Cochrane Jr. to make your views known and request that Silent Sam and other Confederate statues not be allowed on our campus,” said the letter, issued just days before the UNC system Board of Governors could decide the statue’s fate. As far as the proposed strike, the university so far has not “received any specific reports of grades not being submitted or observed any irregular activity,” UNC spokeswoman Joanne Peters Denny said Wednesday.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article222954565.html