N.C. elections board alerted prosecutors to alleged 2016 ballot harvesting, but nothing happened

Authored by nbcnews.com and submitted by un0m
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WASHINGTON – The North Carolina State Board of Elections released information and documents Wednesday that suggest McCrae Dowless ran an operation in the 2016 election much like the one he’s alleged to have run in the 2018 election — paying associates to collect absentee ballots from voters and “hand carry” them to Dowless.

The state board said it had provided the same evidence to state and federal prosecutors in both January 2017 and January 2018, but no action was taken.

The state board, which rarely releases such documents publicly outside of a court process, is looking into whether the alleged similar actions in the 2018 election affected the outcome of the uncalled House race in the Ninth District, where Republican Mark Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by just 905 votes.

According to an eight-page “summary memorandum,” information gathered through interviews by the state board’s investigators “strongly suggested” that Dowless hired associates to collect absentee ballots from voters in Bladen County during the 2016 election cycle. The ballots had to be returned directly to Dowless in order for his workers to get paid.

Dowless is at the center of the current investigation of illegal ballot harvesting that has now expanded from Bladen County to neighboring Robeson County. Dowless was hired by the Red Dome consulting group, which was working for Harris’ congressional campaign.

According to Josh Lawson, the state board’s general counsel, in January 2018 the board provided the same 279 pages of documents released today to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI for the Eastern District of North Carolina, as well as the Wake County District Attorney’s office.

One year earlier, in January 2017, Lawson said, the board had referred the same matters to the same entities for “prosecutorial review and possible criminal prosecution.” Lawson said he was not aware of any prosecutory action by prosecutors in 2017 or 2018.

The U.S. Attorney’s office declined to commnt. The FBI did not respond to a requests for comment. A call to the Wake County District Attorney’s Office was not answered late today. The Wake County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to a previous request for comment about its current investigation into the matters.

“As we were approaching this coming hearing, we thought it was relevant and important information that should be publicly known,” Lawson told NBC News.

Dowless, through his attorney, Cynthia Adams Singletary, declined to appear for an interview with the elections board on or before Jan. 2, according to a letter dated Tuesday and released by the board. Lawson, the state board's general counsel, requested the interview with Dowless in a letter dated Sunday that ordered him, "his agents, and assignees to preserve all records associated with elections and/or election-related activities between January 2016 and the present."

The board will hold a hearing to present its evidence in its 2018 investigation on Jan. 11.

PutinsPawn on December 20th, 2018 at 02:50 UTC »

Since it isn't whitelisted, here's a link to a local article with more details. And a direct link to the materials the election board provided to prosecutors.

The first 9 pages are a summary that is worth reading. Dowless told the people harvesting ballots to suggest candidates to voters. When he found out that he was being investigated, he contacted the ballot harvesters and told them what to say if they were contacted by investigators.

And after Dowless won his election to be the local soil and water district supervisor, he filed an protest with the election board. About his own race. Even though he won. He said it had to be done because there was a high volume of write-in votes, which was suspicious.

Part of his evidence was an affidavit from a voter who complained about Dowless' ballot harvesting efforts. The affidavit apparently didn't mention Dowless by name, and he led the election board to think the improper conduct was done by a local PAC associated with Democrats.

He even recruited people to show up at the hearing and say they witnessed voter fraud. They were told that they would be provided with evidence, and they just needed to show up at the hearing.

ziggyscardust on December 20th, 2018 at 02:21 UTC »

Makes me curious how many states this is happening in. Wisconsin? Michigan? Pennsylvania?

EyeOfTheBeast on December 20th, 2018 at 02:12 UTC »

Submitting a ballot that isn't your own is illegal in N.C. and it is voter fraud, not what ever the heck theymean by, "ballot harvesting."

Something the Republicans have been accusing the state of California of doing because in California, you can register to vote on the same day you vote, but your ballot is conditional and not counted until the registration is confirmed to be valid.

In this case they are using it to describe illegal voter fraud.