L. McCrae Dowless Jr., the North Carolina political operative who was at the center of a scandal involving absentee-ballot harvesting and tampering that led to the first rerun of a federal election in some 40 years, died on Sunday at his daughter's home in Bladen County, North Carolina. He was 66.
Alan Wooten Bladen Journal
RALEIGH McCrae Dowless, accused of being the mastermind of an absentee ballot fraud operation in 2018, pleaded not guilty Friday to federal charges.
Appearing before Judge Terrence Boyle in U.S. District Court, the Bladenboro 65-year-old made the pleas 10 months after his indictment by a grand jury. Prosecutors have charged him with four counts of hiding more than $100,000 in income from the Social Security Administration, money they say was paid him by at least two candidates in the 2018 election.
One of the candidates known to have paid him was the Rev. Mark Harris, who had the most votes on Election Day for the 9th District congressional seat. He was never seated in Congress. All of the county boards of election certified races in the 9th District, but Joshua Malcolm then the chairman of the state Board of Elections, and a Robeson County attorney said he had information about the election that would not allow him to move forward on certificatio