To be fair, this appears to be the work of a rogue candidate, Mark Harris, and his supporters, not the GOP establishment. The Republican incumbent, Rep. Pitteng

To be fair, this appears to be the work of a rogue candidate, Mark Harris, and his supporters, not the GOP establishment. The Republican incumbent, Rep. Pittenger, was also targeted, when Harris challenged and narrowly defeated Pittenger in the Republican primary earlier this year. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-the-heck-is-happening-in-that-north-carolina-house-race/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-the-heck-is-happen... > It turns out that the data irregularities in Bladen County extend to past elections, too. The 9th District saw a contentious and razor-close Republican primary in May 2018, when Harris ousted incumbent Rep. Robert Pittenger by 828 votes. Bladen accounted for 56 percent of the absentee-by-mail ballots (456 of 811) cast in that primary despite being home to just 6 percent of those who voted — and Harris won 437 of those absentee-by-mail votes to Pittenger’s 17, a massive gap nowhere near either the absentee-by-mail results in other counties or the other results in Bladen. And in the 9th District’s 2016 Republican primary, 22 percent of the race’s absentee-by-mail ballots were cast in Bladen County. That time, they went disproportionately to Pittenger challenger Todd Johnson — he won a whopping 221 of Bladen’s 226 absentee-by-mail votes. https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/rep-pittenger-fully-aware-of-unsavory-people-in-election-fraud-claims https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/rep-pittenger-fully-a... > “We were fully aware of it. There’s some pretty unsavory people out, particularly in Bladen County. And I didn’t have anything to do with them,” Pittenger said in an interview with Spectrum News in Raleigh. > Pittenger, who lost his GOP primary to Baptist minister Mark Harris by 828 votes earlier this year, said he did not know what would happen to the general election results. Harris holds a 905-vote lead over Democrat Dan McCready in the election that has now been cast in doubt. > “I don’t have a clue. I have my feelings about what’s right or wrong, but let’s leave that to those who’re [leading the investigation into the irregularities],” Pittenger said. If the North Carolina Republican party were smart they'd support the bipartisan ethics panel and wash their hands of Harris.