The man at the center of fraud probe in North Carolina may have been doing this for eight years
The man at the center of fraud probe in North Carolina may have been doing this for eight years
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/12/05/man-center-apparent-fraud-north-carolina-may-have-been-doing-this-eight-years/?utm_source=reddit.com&utm_term=.8325fa142a2d
By Philip Bump at the Washington Post
"SNIP.....
In 2010, a political operative named Leslie McCrae Dowless received a little over $7,100 to provide get-out-the-vote services for a candidate running in and around Bladen County, N.C. That candidate lost his race by about 6 points, though he won a majority of the mailed-in absentee votes.
That was thanks to Bladen County. Harold “Butch” Pope earned 52 percent of the mail-in absentee vote in his district. In Bladen, he won 81 percent of the absentee vote. Without the votes from Bladen, he would have lost the absentee vote by nearly 3-to-1.
Dowless is now at the center of questions about his role in a much more important contest — the race for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District in this year’s midterms. Over the past several days, Dowless has been identified as the manager of an alleged effort to collect absentee ballots from voters in Bladen that may then have been altered by people other than the voters themselves.
Bladen County was the only county in the 9th District in which Republican candidate Mark Harris won a majority of mailed-in absentee votes last month. As was the case with Pope’s race in 2010, Harris’s support in mailed-in absentee votes was more than 20 percentage points higher than his performance in the rest of the district. It was in the primary, too, when Harris earned a stunning 98 percent of the mailed-in absentee votes in Bladen.
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L: Republican candidate Mark Harris and Donald Trump, R: Leslie McCrae Dowless
1. Leslie McCrae Dowless Served Jail Time For Fraud
Dowless has an extensive criminal history, Popular.info reports.
In 1990, he forged the signature of an employee at his auto sales business who died in a car accident on a life insurance policy, the outlet reported. He backdated the form and named himself the beneficiary. He received a check for $163,541. He pleaded guilty to felony fraud in 1992.
Dowless received a suspended sentence and was placed on probation but served six months in 1995 after he violated the terms of his parole.
Dowless also has multiple misdemeanor convictions for unpaid taxes and writing bad checks.