As of now,  Roy Cooper leads Gov McCrory by about 5,000 votes out of 4.6 million votes cast.  But if McCrory has his way, that will change real fast.  It seems that there are some major problems with the absentee ballots.  There appears to be some funny business with absentee ballots that could affect the vote counts in 11 or 12 counties.  In Bladen County they have found hundreds of ballots that appear to have the same handwriting on the voter signatures and the witness signatures.

Russell Peck, McCrory’s campaign manager said:

“It appears that our worst fears have come true and this absentee ballot fraud scheme may run deeper than just Bladen County.  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.”

The McCrory campaign thinks they have traced the people behind the voter fraud and have filed official protests:

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.

However, if proven to be true, these charges will go well beyond the NC governor’s race.  In court decisions, voter ID laws and other measures seeking to limit voter fraud, have failed because there has been no verifiable proof that voter fraud has altered an election.  That will no longer be true.