The campaign contractor, L. McCrae Dowless Jr., was among five people charged in Wake County, North Carolina, in connection with misconduct related to absentee ballots. The prosecutions were a vigorous legal backlash against a rare instance of election fraud and cast a still-darkening shadow over North Carolina, where state regulators recently ordered a new election in the 9th Congressional District after finding that Dowless had orchestrated an illicit scheme for Mark Harris, the Republican candidate.
“These indictments should serve as a stern warning to anyone trying to defraud elections in North Carolina,” Kim Strach, the executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a statement.
The charges that were unsealed on Wednesday were not tied to the 2018 general election, which investigators are still examining and which Harris once appeared to have won by 905 votes. Instead, this week’s indictments were linked to an election in 2016, when Dowless worked for a different candidate, and the 2018 primary, when he was effectively on the Harris campaign’s payroll.
But the indictments describe many of the same activities that investigators believe played out last fall, when Harris was locked in a tight race with Dan McCready, the Democratic nominee. Dowless, for instance, was accused of directing his associates to harvest absentee ballots from voters and instructing workers to sign ballot envelopes as if they had been legitimate witnesses. North Carolina law typically forbids third parties from handling absentee ballots.
During parts of both the 2016 and 2018 elections, the indictments said, Dowless’ conduct “served to undermine the integrity of the absentee ballot process and the public’s confidence in the outcome of the electoral process.” According to the indictment, spoiled ballots were tabulated in both races, including the 2018 primary, when Harris defeated Rep. Robert M. Pittenger by 828 votes. In that contest, Harris won 437 of the 456 ballots cast through the mail in Bladen County, the hub of Dowless’ operation.
It was not clear on Wednesday how many ballots were compromised and counted during the primary.
Dowless’ lawyer did not respond to a message, and a woman who answered the phone at her office in Elizabethtown, North Carolina, declined to comment. Last week, after Dowless declined to testify during an evidentiary hearing before the state elections board, the lawyer, Cynthia Singletary, said, “I don’t think he’s done anything wrong.”
But to others who observed the proceedings in the state capital, where regulators heard days of testimony about Dowless’ work and reputation, he was all but certain to face prosecution — an outcome that Democrats and Republicans alike said seemed appropriate.
In an interview on Friday, the day after the elections board ordered a new vote, the prosecutor overseeing the criminal inquiry said she expected a grand jury to return its first charges within a month. On Tuesday, the grand jurors acted, but the indictments remained under seal until Dowless, 63, was arrested.
“What has been challenging about this case and this investigation is that, as has been widely reported, certain activity has gone on for years,” the prosecutor, Lorrin Freeman, said last week. “The more interviews you do, the more interviews you have to do.”
Freeman, who is the Wake County district attorney and began investigating Dowless’ activities in Bladen County after the local prosecutor recused himself, said on Wednesday that Dowless had been arrested in the morning and was taken to Raleigh for processing. Dowless’ secured bond was set at $30,000, and he was ordered to avoid contact with anyone who was identified in the indictments.
Four other people were also indicted and face charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice and of illegally possessing absentee ballots. One of the four was also accused of falsely signing the voter certification on an absentee ballot.
Prosecutors could eventually seek additional charges against Dowless or his associates, especially in connection with the 2018 general election. The federal authorities have not said whether they are investigating Dowless.
Dowless has some familiarity with the criminal justice system, and his record includes felony convictions for perjury and fraud. But his background did not keep him from working for Harris, as well as other Democratic and Republican politicians who were seeking office in southeastern North Carolina.
There, Dowless built a reputation as a savvy organizer of effective absentee ballot efforts that, at least sometimes, seemed to rely on criminal conduct and a network of workers with little legal knowledge but a need for quick cash. In 2017, just months after Dowless worked for one of Harris’ rivals during a campaign for Congress, Harris hired him for his 2018 House bid. In doing so, Harris ignored the misgivings of one of his sons, who memorialized his concerns in an email that became public last week.
“The key thing that I am fairly certain they do that is illegal is that they collected the completed absentee ballots and mail them all at once,” John Harris wrote to his father in 2017.
Mark Harris repeatedly denied that he knew of any wrongdoing by Dowless or others in his operation, which his campaign spent tens of thousands of dollars to underwrite. Indeed, he insisted that Dowless had explicitly assured him that his effort would involve nothing improper. But Harris, who appeared to mislead investigators during his testimony, ultimately decided last Thursday that he would support a new election.
State officials are expected to meet on Monday to set a schedule for the new election, which will include a primary and be conducted as if a member of Congress had died or resigned. McCready, last year’s Democratic candidate, said on Friday that he would enter the race. On Tuesday, Harris cited his health and announced that he would not be a candidate.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.