NC-09: GOP Operative Held 800 Absentee Ballots

[RandySF]

“McCrae Dowless, the man whose ‘get-out-the-vote’ activities are the center of the election fraud investigation in North Carolina, told a local political campaign volunteer that he was holding onto 800 absentee ballots,” according to a new affidavit obtained by NBC News.

“In the signed statement, Kenneth Simmons said that he met Dowless at a local Republican Party meeting in the small town of Dublin. Dublin is located in Bladen County, the epicenter of the election fraud investigation involving absentee ballots. During that interaction, Simmons wrote, he and his wife saw Dowless with a large number of absentee ballots ‘in his possession.’”



https://politicalwire.com/2018/12/12/gop-operative-held-800-absentee-ballots/

[Renew Deal]

1. How many elections would have to be re-run for this?

[Raster]

2. GOP electoral dirty trickster McCrae Dowless has a reputation and a record....

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/man-center-north-carolina-election-fraud-allegations-has-complicated-past-n945511

WASHINGTON — Leslie McCrae Dowless, the man at the center of election fraud allegations that have roiled North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, has a long and colorful history as a political operative in the district.

The candidates he works for often perform better than expected among absentee voters in one of the district's counties, one reason he’s been hired by a variety of political campaigns over the years.

But public records paint a more complicated picture, linking him to past accusations of improper ballot collection and showing he spent time in prison on a felony fraud conviction unrelated to elections.

Dowless has come under increased scrutiny since the North Carolina State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement voted not to certify Republican Mark Harris’s apparent 905-vote victory over Democrat Dan McCready in the 9th district congressional race. The board, a state agency charged with the administration and certification of elections, instead called for a public hearing by Dec. 21 to investigate “claims of irregularities and fraudulent activities related to absentee by-mail ballots.”

<snip, more>

[struggle4progress]

3. GOP Tells Elections Board to Certify 9th District Results

Posted Dec 3, 2018 9:44 AM
Griffin Connolly

Republicans in North Carolina are pressuring the state elections board there to certify the 9th District results, even as officials continue to investigate irregularities in absentee voting. Those irregularities, and a handful of sworn statements alleging illegal “harvesting” of absentee ballots, have led to accusations of election fraud for the benefit of Republican Mark Harris ...

https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/gop-tells-n-c-elections-board-certify-9th-district-results-even-probes-election-fraud

[struggle4progress]

4. Upset about election fraud, before it threatened their candidate

By Eli Rosenberg
December 6

... The state election board declined last week to certify a close congressional race in the area that Dowless worked on, and news reports with evidence and witnesses have been helping illuminate a potentially illegal ballot-harvesting operation aimed at voters in at least one county. Investigators are looking into what happened with absentee ballots that were gathered from the county and why it seems as if so many were never turned in.

Yet for the past week, >Dallas Woodhouse, executive chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party> has repeatedly questioned and downplayed the inquiry — at one point going so far as to complain, without evidence, that it was part of a Democratic conspiracy to steal the election — and regularly threatening legal action over the official inquiry into the integrity of the race ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/12/06/gop-was-upset-about-election-fraud-before-it-threatened-their-candidate/?utm_term=.b3d4ef30fd3c

[struggle4progress]

5. North Carolina vote fraud raises questions for GOP

The Editorial Board, USA TODAY Published
7:32 p.m. ET Dec. 11, 2018
Updated 7:42 p.m. ET Dec. 11, 2018

... Republicans do still care about election fraud, but only in cases where it doesn’t exist, or exists in trivial quantities. In those cases, it can be deployed as a pretext to purge Democrats from the registration rolls for the crime of being infrequent voters, or turn them away at the ballot box for having the wrong kind of ID.

In the rare cases when credible evidence of election fraud actually shows up — like in this year’s race for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District — Republicans are flummoxed ...

The controversy centers on Bladen County ... The absentee ballots were eyebrow-raising. The gross number was well above expectations. And they broke heavily in Harris’ favor, while they broke heavily in McCready’s favor elsewhere.

... the GOP's feeble response to election fraud belies a party with few guiding principles besides a desperate desire to cling to power.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/12/11/north-carolina-voter-fraud-raises-questions-republican-party-editorials-debates/2279938002/

[Roland99]

6. LOCK THEM UP! LOCK THEM UP!

[Persondem]

7. NC, land of Tar Heels and cheating GOP assholes. K & R nt