my name is leslie mccray, and i am in outside beauty sales.d in this neighborhood since august of this year. after my fire in my apartment and losing everything, the red cross gave us a list of agencies in the city to reach out to and find out about various programs that could help us get back on our feet, and i signed up for the below market rate program, got my certificate, and started applying and won the housing lottery. this particular building was brand-new, and really, this is the one that i wanted out of everything i applied for. and i came to the open house here, and there were literally hundreds of people looking at the building. and i -- in my mind, i was, like, how am i ever going to possibly win this? and i did. and when you get that notice that you want, it's surreal, and you don't really believe it, and then it sinks in, yeah, i can have it, and i'm finally good to go; i can stay. my favorite thing about my home, although i miss the charm about the old victorian is everything is brand-new. it's beautiful. my kitchen is amazing.

that man's name is leslie mccray.ports of people knocking on doors in the district offering help with filling out and mailing absentee ballots. but what happened to the ballots after that is unclear. some of the ballots might have been filled out by the person offering the help. others might have been destroyed by the person offering to help. but in the end there was an extraordinary outcome in the absentee ballot count, a north carolina political science professor studied the results in bladen county where 42 ers% of the mailed in absentee ballots were from democrats. but the republican got 61% of that absentee mail in vote. and the democrat got just 38%. michael is is the political science professor who did that ballot analysis, and he will join us next, and we will have many more details on what happened to those absentee ballots in north carolina and what's going to happen next including the possibility of a new election in that district. hey, what are you guys doing here? we've been helping you prepare and invest

ballot requests might have been koords na coordinated in a single county by a convicted felon named leslie mccraylas. according to new nbc reporti ii himself asked for 590 absentee ballots where another person named dallas, maybe a distant relative asked for another 185. 185 plus 590 and you get the 775 requests. the problem is only absentee ballots were returned and some were seemingly collected like this. >> a young lady came to the door. she knocked on the door and asked could she get the absentee ballot. i broke the seal to show her it wasn't never broken. i filled out two boxes. she said she would fill the rest out and it wasn't important. i signed it. gave it to her. it was not sealed. she said she would seal it and come back to me and show me it was sealed. i never got a show back from her. >> you found out that your absentee ballot was never turned in? >> the investigators came. he came and he showed me my name was on the list where my absentee ballot did not come up in the system. >> the north carolina election board is in the thick of an investigation into how the ballots were collected

leslie mccray dowely. probing his connection with an alleged absentee ballot operation in the ninth congressional district. he was working for mark harris who leads his democratic opponent by 905 votes. harris says he would support a new election if there is evidence of fraud. as cnn's sue griffin reports, evidence of election irregularities continues to mount in north carolina. >> documents being released by the north carolina board of elections show the investigation is expanding. a cnn review of robeson county found a team of hired campaign workers may have harvested dozens of unsealed absentee ballots, then signed as witnesses. it is the same pattern found in neighboring bladen county, and allegedly connected to mccraig dallas, the paid political operative under investigation. he has not returned numerous requests for comment. the mounting evidence of election fraud has prompted the democratic loser, the ninth district congressional race, dan mccrady to rescind his concession to mark harris. >> are you

his name is leslie mccray dallas.was convicted of fraud and perjury back in the '90s, charges not related to elections. in 2016, he was accused of paying volunteers for each absentee ballot they collected, according to the radio show, "this american life." north carolina law says you're not allowed to collect absentee ballots. close family members can deliver them, but that's it. now he worked for the republican congressional candidate, mark harris, this time around. and the big question, phillip, how was this guy allowed to be working on an election? there was -- he had -- he was a convicted felon for insurance-related crimes, and then in 2016, there was this "this american life" story. >> and there's no good answer. the names just read as having witnessed that thing were jessica dallas and sandra dallas, relatives involved in this operation. it's mind-boggling. and we saw it in the primary. there was some great data pulled by michael mcdonald who looked at the absentee vote in the same county in the primary, a prima

a convicted felon by the name of leslie mccray, suspected of coordinating illegal ballot grabs.f his alleged unwitting helpers talked to a local tv station, a woman who said she was paid $75 to $100 a week to bring completed absentee ballots straight to him. joining me now, republican strategist and director of progressive programming at sirius xm. they're both msnbc political analysts. a lot to unpack here. what is going on? what happened to the sanctity of the ballot box and honoring the will of the people? >> look, i think that we have a long history of challenges that are related to voting. certainly people have bled and died to get the right to vote because it is so valuable. i think that certainly as a consequence of elections, lame duck sessions, often there's a lot of activity. everybody remembers during the lame duck session in president obama's administration, we repealed "don't ask, don't tell." that was one thing that they did during the lame duck session during his tenure that was controversial, i think, at the time for people who are opposed to that policy. but i d