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At roughly this time a decade ago, Mark Meadows was running his first successful Republican congressional campaign in North Carolina, en route to an easy victory. In three ensuing election cycles, North Carolinians proceeded to re-elect him by even wider margins.
That, of course, was an era in which things looked pretty good for Meadows in the Tar Heel State. As NBC News reported, the former congressman’s position in North Carolina has taken a significant turn for the worse.
Mark Meadows, who was White House chief of staff in the Trump administration, was removed from the voter roll in North Carolina on Monday, the State Board of Elections confirmed. The State Bureau of Investigation is investigating the registration, spokesperson Anjanette Grube said.
A spokesperson for the state Board of Elections said the Republican was removed “after documentation indicated he lived in Virginia and last voted in the 2021 election there.” NBC News’ report added, “Voters who cast ballots outside the state would be considered to have lost residency in North Carolina, according to state law.”
Stepping back, there is a degree of irony to the circumstances. As we recently discussed, before and after Election Day 2020, Meadows talked quite a bit about voting irregularities. Like so many members of Donald Trump’s team, the Republican was heavily invested in the demonstrably false idea that there was widespread fraud.
“Do you realize how inaccurate the voter rolls are, with people just moving around?” Meadows asked in August 2020? He later complained in his memoir about some people casting ballots despite not being “an actual resident of the state they were voting in.”
It was against this backdrop that the public recently learned that Meadows himself appears to have cast a ballot from his former home state of North Carolina, despite having moved away from the state and no longer being an actual state resident.
A local district attorney referred the matter to the state attorney general’s office, which asked North Carolina’s Bureau of Investigation to look into Meadows’ voter registration. We now know that investigation is underway, and the former congressman’s registration has been pulled.
Based solely on publicly available information, it appears Meadows will be facing questions that might be difficult to answer. As regular readers know, Meadows and his wife owned a home in North Carolina, but he sold his house in March 2020 and lived in a condo near Washington, D.C.
That wouldn’t be especially notable — it’s common for political insiders to move to the D.C. area — except Meadows continued to vote from North Carolina.
In fact, in September 2020, Meadows submitted a voter registration form that used the address of a rented mobile home. The official materials directed Meadows to include the residential address where he “physically” lived and sign the document “under penalty of perjury.”
There’s reason to believe, however, that Meadows did not actually live in the rented mobile home. According to the former White House chief of staff’s former landlord, Meadows never even spent the night there. It’s an open question as to whether he even ever set foot in the dwelling.
The new owner of the property told The New Yorker magazine, which published the original scoop, that it’s “really weird“ that Meadows listed the mobile home as his residence.
Nevertheless, the Republican used that address to cast an absentee ballot, through the mail, for the 2020 general election.
When WRAL in Raleigh first reported on the story, the local NBC affiliate added, “The revelation has raised questions about potential voter fraud and could prompt state and local officials to investigate.”
You don’t say.
As best as I can tell, Meadows has not responded publicly to any questions regarding the allegations. Watch this space.