Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus said lawmakers in North Carolina should consider giving the state’s electoral college votes to Donald Trump before ballots are counted on election night.
At a Republican Party dinner in Maryland on Thursday, Harris said the Republican controlled state legislature in North Carolina should declare in advance that Trump should win the state’s 16 electoral votes because of the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene in pro-Trump counties.
“It makes a lot of sense,” Harris said. “You statistically can go and say, ‘Look, you got disenfranchised in 25 counties. You know what that vote probably would have been.’ Which would be—if I were in the Legislature—enough to go, ‘Yeah we have to convene the legislature. We can’t disenfranchise the voters.’”
The video was posted to X by prominent election denier Ivan Raiklin who was also the guest speaker at the dinner. Raiklin’s tweet laying out a strategy for Mike Pence to block the certification of electoral votes in Congress on Jan. 6 2021 was retweeted by Donald Trump.
Nowadays, Raiklin has been traveling the country promoting another radical strategy which involves having state legislatures award electoral votes to Trump if they believe there is fraud in the election, according to Politico.
He argued that Republican-controlled legislatures in New Hampshire, Arizona, Nebraska, Georgia and Wisconsin could take steps to award their electors to Trump before votes are counted.
However he admitted that it would be more difficult to justify such a move in these other states when prompted by Harris.
“In North Carolina, it’s legitimate,” Raiklin said. “There are a lot of people that aren’t going to get to vote and it may make the difference in that state.”
