House by house, more questions emerge in 9th District

State records show Cain has voted by mail repeatedly over the years.

But last November, her vote went uncounted. Her absentee ballot is one of roughly 3,400 that state records show as requested but not returned in last year's 9th Congressional District general election.

The count is disproportionately concentrated in a few counties covered by the 9th District.

One of them is Bladen County, where one-third of absentee ballots requested weren’t returned and counted in the 2018 contest, according to a WRAL News analysis of state voting data.

Since then, elections officials have delayed certification of results in the 9th District, where Republican Mark Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes. Investigators have descended on the counties in question to probe irregularities that could lead to a new election to determine the state’s 13th member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Investigators haven’t said much about the case publicly. But their path overlapped a two-day canvass by a team of reporters and photographers from WRAL News that attempted to reach 104 voters in a single Bladenboro precinct, all of whom state data shows were sent – but never returned – absentee ballots in the 2018 general election.

The project highlighted the challenges investigators face as they try to sort out what happened in the 9th District, and what should be done about it. Hazy and uncertain memories, hard-to-find voters, a region plagued by pre-election hurricanes and a history of local fraud allegations all complicate a narrative in which well-known local political operator McCrae Dowless has emerged as the central person of interest.

Even the list WRAL reporters worked from highlights the difficulty of sussing out what happened. Cain’s ballot, state and local elections officials said in the last few days, was returned. It wasn't counted because she didn’t sign it, they said.

Staff at the Bladen County Board of Elections said Monday that Cain probably appeared on the list of unreturned ballots because her first ballot was discarded and a replacement went unreturned. At least two other voters seemed to fall into a similar category, adding another layer of uncertainty about just how many ballots went unreturned and why.

Some resolution may come soon. A newly formed state elections board announced Monday that it will hold a public hearing to go over what investigators have found beginning Feb. 18. The hearing is expected to last two to three days.

The Bladenboro 2 precinct sits in southwest Bladen County, encompassing nearly all of Bladenboro proper. Almost 40 percent of 2018 absentee ballots here went unreturned, and the precinct featured the largest number of unreturned absentee ballots in a county that has long attracted attention from elections investigators.

There are lots of legitimate reasons for voters not to return absentee ballots, and many of the people WRAL reporters spoke with over two days in January said they simply didn’t send them back because of illness, busy schedules or just disgust with the political process.

But others said they spoke with people – some they knew to be working for Dowless, some they didn’t know at all – who came to their doors or approached them in driveways and store parking lots to fill out absentee ballot request forms.

That's legal. But taking possession of someone else’s ballot, unless that person is a close relative, is generally a felony under state law.

Jamie Willoughby told WRAL News that he left a ballot in his mailbox for one of Dowless’ workers. The woman had come earlier to get him to request that ballot, he said.

"It was, I guess, like a job to her," Willoughby said as he sat in his truck.

Becky Deaver confirmed that she approached Willoughby to fill out a request form but said she never returned to pick up the ballot itself. She was part of Dowless' operation for a few days, mostly in his Dublin, N.C., office, she said.

Deaver said she never saw any ballots, which are different from request forms. She said she worked in the field only a few times and that Dowless offered to pay $100 for 10 signatures on ballot request forms.

Willoughby was one of two people in Bladenboro 2 who said they believe someone, either Dowless or someone they didn't know, ended up with their ballot. The other was Melissa Taylor, who wasn’t positive but said she thought she gave her ballot to a woman who came to her home.

One of the goals in knocking doors in Bladenboro 2 was to put a finer point on the allegations being made. WRAL News also combed through media reports and affidavits filed with the State Board of Elections to catalog accusations out of Bladen and Robeson counties, where nearly half the unreturned ballots in the 9th District race originated.

Add in this wider world, and the number of people who say someone collected their ballot rises to at least 11. Of those, three said it was Dowless or one of his associates. Two of those, Hazel Guyton and Chris Eason, signed sworn affidavits.

On top of that, a man named Kenneth Simmons swears in another affidavit that he saw Dowless with a stack of ballots.

Dowless has rebuffed repeated interview requests, but he issued a statement through an attorney weeks ago denying any criminal wrongdoing.

The more common story from voters is that someone approached them about requesting a ballot and often came back hoping to collect. Thirteen people in Bladenboro 2 alone had a story along those lines.

That includes Cain, who told a visitor that her ballot, and her daughter’s, were already in the mail.

It also includes Constance Brooks, who said a woman visited her apartment three times wanting to help her vote and talking up Harris’ congressional campaign. Based on that recommendation, Brooks said she voted for Harris, but she mailed her ballot herself.

It's unclear why state records show Brooks' ballot unreturned.

Eight of the 13 people in Bladenboro 2 who said someone suggested they request an absentee ballot also said they never received that ballot, including Wendy Smith.

Smith said she requested ballots for herself, her son and her daughter after Dowless, whom she’s known for a long time, pulled up to her driveway. Smith is Deaver's mother. Both said their ballots never arrived.

"We lose mail here," Smith said.

Kassie Fores said she requested a ballot for herself and her husband, Roy, at Dowless' request, after she ran into him at a Dollar General store. At their home in Bladenboro, the couple said they never got anything in the mail.

Jerrad Davis lives across the street from Dowless. He said he thinks he might be related to one of Dowless' grandsons. They hang out together, at least.

Davis said he also thinks he filled out a request for an absentee ballot – "I was over at the house chillin', and they gave me some paperwork" – but said he never got a ballot in the mail.

Saundra Hines lives in an assisted-living housing complex on Village Street, a tidy complex of small brick dwellings.

Hines remembers very clearly two women coming to her door last fall, saying they were trying to help senior citizens vote. They filled out an absentee ballot request form for her, she signed it, and they took it away.

A few weeks later, she received her ballot, filled it out and had two friends at the nearby senior center witness it, then put it in the mail, she said.

But she's on the unreturned list.

A spokesman for the State Board of Elections said Hines failed to sign her ballot envelope as required by law, so her vote wasn’t counted. He provided a copy of the envelope as backup.

Staff at the Bladen County Board of Elections said their records showed two ballots sent to Hines, which may explain why her ballot was listed as unreturned.

State Board of Elections spokesman Patrick Gannon declined to comment on the status of the investigation or its complications.

But it was clear that elections officials knocked on many of the same doors as WRAL reporters in Bladenboro 2. Business cards for election investigators were still tucked into door frames, and many of the voters said they’d spoken with officials who had already been by.

Although the canvass of one precinct may provide some indication of how widespread voting irregularities were in Bladen County last November, it was neither exhaustive nor conclusive.

But it shows the job of investigators isn’t an easy one.

Some of the addresses on WRAL’s list of unreturned ballots belong to abandoned houses or nearly demolished trailers. Knocks at many doors went unanswered, despite repeat visits. Some homes can be accessed only by muddy, washboard roads. Some addresses reporters were unable to locate.

One person listed as requesting a ballot in Bladenboro 2 died before the election. Another moved to Maryland more than a year before the election. Another had moved out because of medical issues, according to his neighbor.

Many of the voters had trouble remembering exactly who came to their homes for just a few minutes as much as three months before. At least three described themselves as legally blind.

These are problems state officials have faced before.

Years ago, concerns over Bladen County’s 2010 sheriff’s election made it all the way to the State Bureau of Investigation and the state Attorney General’s Office. But, in a 2013 letter, a special deputy attorney general reviewing the case wrote to Bladen County’s top prosecutor to say the state couldn’t go further.

“Although there were many allegations of voter fraud and assorted trickery, I was unable to uncover any conduct or tactics that would rise to the level of a crime,” Special Deputy Attorney General Adren Harris wrote. “Specifically, most of the alleged victims are elderly and lack the ability to recall the details that are necessary in pursuing criminal charges.”