The GOP scheme to allegedly steal the US House election in NC's ninth congressional district is coming to light, and it looks like GOP Rep. Mark Harris hired a convicted fraudster named McCrae Dowless to run his illegal absentee ballot farming operation, according to Charlotte ABC affiliate WSOC-TV.
What Channel 9 found appears to be a targeted effort to illegally pick up ballots, in which even the person picking them up had no idea whether those ballots were even delivered to the elections board.
Consistently, Channel 9 found the same people signing as witnesses for the people voting, which is very rare.
Of the 159 submitted and accepted absentee ballot envelopes, below is the breakdown of those who signed as witnesses:
- Woody Hester witnessed 44
- James Singletary witnessed 42
- Lisa Britt witnessed 42
- Ginger Eason witnessed 28
- Jessica Dowless witnessed 15
- Cheryl Kinlaw witnessed 13
- Deborah Edwards witnessed 11
- Sandra Dowless witnessed 10
Many times, people on that list witnessed ballots together.
Channel 9’s political reporter Joe Bruno went door-to-door in Bladen County trying to find out who these people are.
No one answered at Woody Hester’s home. James Singletary wasn’t home either and Lisa Britt doesn’t live at the address she said she did on the ballots.
Bruno then visited Ginger Eason. She told him why her name appeared so many times as a witness.
“I was helping McCrae pick up ballots,” Eason said.
Eason said Leslie McCrae Dowless, Jr. paid her $75 to $100 a week to go around and pick up finished absentee ballots.
Once again, Dowless is a convicted felon who has served time for both fraud and perjury and it looks like he may have been running similar scams for multiple candidates over the years in NC.
Dowless’ past work includes huge differences between his candidate’s absentee by mail total and opponents.
Dowless wasn’t always connected to the Harris campaign.
In the 2016 primary, records show Dowless worked for Todd Johnson, who ran against Harris and Robert Pittenger.
Campaign finance reports show Dowless was paid $6,456 by Johnson’s campaign.
The disbursement description was for “get out the vote.”
In the June 2016 primary, Johnson finished last in the race, trailing the top vote-getter Pittenger by a little more than 1,100 votes. Despite the loss, Johnson dominated in Bladen County, carrying 68 percent of the vote.
A deeper look at the votes reveals Johnson received 98 percent of absentee by mail votes.
Johnson received 221 absentee-by-mail votes.
Pittenger and Harris combined for five.
The 221 absentee-by-mail votes amounted to 51 percent of his total votes received by that method and 21 percent of the total amount of absentee-by-mail votes when each candidate’s totals are added together.
As Channel 9 reported last week, Dowless was referenced in two affidavits that are now included in NCSBE’s investigation.
In one affidavit, a witness claims he overheard a person saying Dowless would be paid $40,000 for a Mark Harris victory.
Another man claims in an affidavit that Dowless told him he was doing “absentees” for the Mark Harris campaign and James McVicker’s campaign for Bladen County sheriff.
I would have to at this point assume a new election will be held, and I wouldn't want to be in Mark Harris's shoes when all this mess comes out to voters.
The only real election fraud in 2018 was perpetrated by Republicans against elderly voters, mostly poor black ones. Let's keep this in mind.
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