CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ McCrae Dowless, the political operative at the center of the 9th District election fraud case, has been indicted on charges related to collecting absentee ballots in the 2018 and 2016 elections.
Dowless has been arrested, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said Wednesday. He faces three felony charges of obstruction of justice, two charges of conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice and two charges of possession of absentee ballot.
The indictment said Dowless' actions "served to undermine the integrity of the absentee ballot process and the public's confidence in the outcome of the electoral process."
The charges represent the first criminal prosecution in the congressional absentee ballot fraud case that rocked the 9th District and resulted in the first new election ordered for fraud in North Carolina history.
According to the indictment, the defendant "unlawfully, willfully, and feloniously did, with deceit and intent to defraud, obstruct public and legal justice by submitting or causing to be submitted by mail absentee ballots ... in such a manner to conceal the fact that the voter had not personally mailed it himself."
During the 2018 race, Dowless worked for Republican Mark Harris, who appeared to win on election night with a razor-thin margin of 905 votes. The state Board of Elections refused to certify the results, however, after questions emerged about Dowless' alleged ballot-harvesting scheme.
Mark Harris could not be immediately reached Wednesday.
He testified during a state Board of Elections hearing this month that he hired Dowless after the 2016 race, when he saw that his opponent Todd Johnson had racked up 221 out of 225 absentee ballots cast in Bladen County during the Republican primary, which Harris had lost.
The state board unanimously ordered a new election because of the evidence of fraud in Bladen County. Harris said Tuesday that he will not run in the new election, and endorsed Union County commissioner Stony Rushing in his stead.
Four other people _ Caitlyn E. Croom, Matthew Monroe Mathis, Tonia Gordon and Rebecca Thompson _ also face charges related to absentee ballot collection in Bladen County over the past two elections, Freeman said.
A woman at the office of Dowless' attorney, Cynthia Singletary, said "No comment" and hung up Wednesday. It was not immediately clear whether Dowless was still in custody.
Dowless was called to appear at the Board of Elections hearing but refused to testify unless he was granted immunity, which the board declined to do.
Freeman's office said the criminal investigation is ongoing. The investigation recently completed by the North Carolina State Board of Elections will be forwarded to the State Bureau of Investigations within 30 days, Freeman said.
The charges relate to the 2016 general and 2018 primary elections.
In 2016, Croom was among those who submitted handwritten affidavits saying they were paid by Dowless to collect ballots. She wrote in the affidavit that she and a woman named "Kelly" met Dowless and he offered them $225, in two installments, to collect absentee ballot requests from voters.
That's legal, but what she said happened next was not.
"We would then start to go out and collect ballots," Croom wrote. If they got 20, they'd get the other half of the $225. "After we had all 20 of them witness and were signed we would take them back to McCrae. He would then take them and tell us he would handel (sic) mailing them off."
