North Carolina board calls for new election in disputed House race

The backdrop: Harris told the board moments before its unanimous ruling to order a new election to settle the country’s last unresolved midterm House race — a sharp reversal from his previous calls and a failed court challenge last month for election officials to certify him. It did not immediately set a date.

• Harris holds an unofficial 905-vote lead over his Democratic opponent, but the board had declined to certify him as a winner last year due to claims of "numerous" absentee voting irregularities and later launched a probe.

Also on Thursday, the board's fourth day of hearings into voting irregularities, Harris told the five-member panel he had no knowledge of any election fraud. But he did acknowledge that he ignored warnings from his son about the Republican operative, Leslie McCrae Dowless.

• John Harris, an assistant U.S. attorney in Raleigh, said under oath Wednesday that he had expressed misgivings about Dowless to his father in 2017 after analyzing absentee-ballot returns in 9th district in 2016. The elder Harris had narrowly lost the GOP primary and Dowless worked for the another Republican candidate.

• The younger Harris' testimony contradicted his father's claim last month that he never heard any red flags about Dowless before hiring him.

Go deeper:

• North Carolina House race in doubt over claims of electoral fraud
• North Carolina investigators find evidence of significant fraud in House election