By james art A Maryland Republican has raised the prospect of awarding North Carolina’s 16 electoral college votes to GOP nominee Donald Trump even before the Nov. 5 presidential election, citing storm damage in the western part of the state and the perceived certainty of how voters would vote.
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Med.), the chairman of a group of hard-right and libertarian House Republicans called the Freedom Caucus, made the comments Thursday at a GOP dinner after a speech by pro-Trump activist Ivan Ryklin, who argued that states should give their votes to the former president if they believe the 2024 election was tainted.
North Carolina is a swing state that Trump previously won twice by narrow margins. Average polls support him by about 1 percentage point in next month’s election.
After Hurricane Helen made landfall in the southeastern United States in late September, the storm passed over western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, causing massive flooding in the mountainous region and leading to a natural disaster declaration for the area. Cleanup efforts continue and some roads remain closed due to the damage, impeding transportation.
“Statistically, you can go and say, ‘Hey, look, you’re disenfranchised in 25 counties. You know what that vote probably would have been’ — which would have been enough if I’d been in the legislature to say, ‘Yeah, we’ve got to call the legislature, we can’t disenfranchise our voters,'” Harris said at the dinner. according to a video posted online by Ryklin, who often sits in the audience during congressional hearings.
Harris expressed doubt that any other state could legitimately use this line of reasoning, saying it could look like a “power play” elsewhere.
“With North Carolina, I mean, it’s legal,” he said. “There are a lot of people who won’t vote, and that could make a difference in this state.”
The US Constitution gives state legislatures the power to control their votes in the Electoral College; 48 states, including North Carolina, use the winner-take-all model, which favors the winner of the popular vote.
Harris voted against certifying the 2020 Electoral College results on January 6, 2021 – even after a violent mob fueled by Trump’s election fraud lies ransacked the US Capitol.
In a statement from his office, Harris said his remarks Thursday were “theoretical” and taken out of context.
“As I have repeatedly said, every legitimate vote must count,” Harris said.
“Voting is going well in western North Carolina right now, even though FEMA is spending over a billion dollars housing illegal immigrants instead of helping North Carolinians,” he added, repeating a false claim about the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s efforts hurricane relief situations that North Carolina Republicans have repeatedly debunked.
Despite extensive damage from the storm, the state broke its record for turnout on the first day of early voting last week, with the majority of early voting locations still open in western counties hit hardest by flooding.