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发帖数: 5309 | 1 The executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections
revealed Monday that state officials had uncovered a “coordinated” and “
unlawful” effort to collect absentee ballots on behalf of a Republican
congressional candidate in the November election.
Kim Strach, the board’s executive director, made the comments at a closely
watched public evidentiary hearing in Raleigh on Monday following a
monthslong investigation into election irregularities in the state’s 9th
Congressional District. The state board declined to certify the race last
November and could order a new election after the hearing. Republican Mark
Harris currently leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes in the race.
In the first public comments outlining the results of the state’s probe,
Strach said investigators had evidence that McCrae Dowless, a political
operative working on behalf of the Harris campaign, filled out and mailed in
incomplete or blank ballots from both his office and home. She said Dowless
paid people in cash to collect requests for absentee ballots and the
ballots themselves. The state board also has evidence, she said, that
Dowless paid people to falsify signatures on absentee ballots indicating
that they had witnessed those ballots being filled out (North Carolina
requires two witnesses to someone filling out an absentee ballot).
It is not illegal to help someone request an absentee ballot in North
Carolina, but it is illegal for anyone other than a close relative to take
custody of the actual ballot.
Strach said Dowless took several steps to conceal the fraud. Those measures
included using the same color ink as the voter who filled out other parts of
the ballot, mailing the ballot from a post office close to the voter and
placing the stamps on the envelopes in a certain way not to raise red flags.
Paid To Collect Absentee Ballots
The first witness at the hearing ― Lisa Britt, a Dowless employee ―
testified that she was paid to go out and help voters ask for absentee
ballots and to collect the absentee ballots themselves. Britt, whose mother
was married to Dowless decades ago, said she received $150 to $175 for every
50 request forms she turned in. She said she was initially paid about $125
for every 50 absentee ballots she turned in, but later that was turned into
a weekly fee because it was more difficult to get people to hand over their
absentee ballots.
Britt said Dowless never told her to not take custody of the ballots.
She also accused Dowless of trying to obstruct the investigation into
irregularities and even attempting to influence her testimony before the
board. She said that after the election, he had told his workers that if
they stuck together, nothing would happen because officials didn’t have
evidence of wrongdoing. According to Britt, Dowless instructed her last
Thursday to testify on Monday that neither she nor Dowless had done anything
wrong and to plead her 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination.
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In her testimony, Britt confirmed what Strach said as well. She said she
herself had collected between 35 and 40 absentee ballots, about half of
which had been properly witnessed. She said she didn’t mark anyone’s
ballot to indicate a vote for Harris, but on unsealed ballots, she did fill
out downballot races for Republicans. She said she did this so that election
officials wouldn’t get suspicious as to why there were so many races left
blank and because Dowless was working on behalf of Republicans.
According to Britt, Dowless instructed her to mail only nine or 10 absentee
ballots at a time from a post office close to where the voters lived.
Mailing more could raise suspicions.
She said she had accidentally placed a stamp upside down on an absentee
ballot and Dowless had told her not to do that because that too could raise
red flags with election officials.
When Marc Elias, a lawyer for McCready, pressed Britt as to why she never
questioned Dowless about the underlying purpose behind all these steps, she
said it was because he was like a father figure to her and she trusted that
he wouldn’t ask her to do anything illegal.
Britt said that she now believed she had engaged in wrongdoing, but that she
didn’t know at the time what she was doing was wrong. Dowless, she said,
had done things wrong as well.
She also said she did not believe that Harris knew anything about the
absentee ballot scheme.
Cynthia Singletary, an attorney representing Dowless, told reporters in
Raleigh on Monday that he had not tried to obstruct testimony.
Asked To Falsely Sign As Voter’s Witness
The second witness called by the state board on Monday was Kelly Hendrix,
who also worked for Dowless. She said she got to know him when he gave her
rides to her job at Hardee’s.
Hendrix said that Dowless asked her to sign as a witness on absentee ballots
that she personally had not collected.
Republicans have called on the state board to certify Harris as the winner
of the race if the board does not have evidence that the alleged illegal
activity could have swayed the outcome of the election.
In her opening remarks on Monday, Strach said the state board was looking
not only at absentee ballots that were mailed in but at the unusually high
number of absentee ballots that voters requested but didn’t return to
election officials in two counties in the 9th District. She said that over 2
,000 absentee ballots in Bladen and Robeson counties went unreturned.
Strach said that Harris had hired Dowless through a third party, Red Dome
Group, and paid him $131,375 between July 2017 and November 2018. |
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