Mark Harris' son on Bladen absentee ballot operation: I thought it was illegal, and I was right

In calls and emails, John Harris sounded alarms about Bladen County political operative McCrae Dowless, pointing to shady past results and predicting the controversy that has dogged his father since soon after the November election.

"I thought what he was doing was illegal," John Harris told the State Board of Elections as his mother and father looked on Wednesday. "And I was right."

John Harris said he had no vendetta, no score to settle with his testimony. He said he loves his parents. He said his father is an honest man who likely believed Dowless when he promised he wasn't illegally collecting absentee ballots to produce lopsided results in the county's mail-in vote.

But Mark Harris has publicly denied that he was ever warned that Dowless' methods looked like fraud.

"The only thing that people would say was that it was unusual," the former pastor told Charlotte radio station WFAE earlier this year.

John Harris said he cut off most communication with his parents as stories about the controversy began in early December, at least partly because he's an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, the office with jurisdiction over ballot fraud in federal elections in this part of the state.

He visited his parents at Christmas, he said, and more recently while his father was in the hospital. But John Harris said he didn't tell his parents he'd been subpoenaed to appear at hearings that may lead to a do-over election in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District.

He also provided emails to state investigators that they didn't get from the his father's campaign despite a subpoena for documents – something the campaign may have to answer for before this saga ends.

Mark Harris fought tears as his son closed his testimony Wednesday. He's expected to take the stand himself Thursday, the fourth day of State Board of Elections hearings on the results of the 9th District race, the last uncalled congressional contest in the country. Mark Harris has a 905-vote lead, enough to hold even if the board throws out questioned absentee ballots, but that may not matter if the bipartisan board decides the election is too tainted to stand.

Mark Harris met with Dowless in April 2017 to talk about the 2018 campaign, he has said. In emails soon after, John Harris repeatedly warned his father that Dowless' promises were too good to be true. He quoted state law: It's a felony to collect other people's ballots.

Key witness won't testify in 9th District hearing, while others detail scheme to collect absentee ballots

Dowless had worked for Todd Johnson, now a Republican state senator, in 2016, when Johnson ran in the the 9th District primary against Mark Harris and then-Congressman Robert Pittenger. Despite a third-place finish overall, Johnson crushed the other two candidates in the Bladen County mail-in count: 221 to 4 to 1.

The result mattered less because Johnson didn't win, John Harris said in the April email. But if it had been Pittenger, he wrote, "I would have strongly advocated going to the press with the analysis of the numbers ... as well as investigated some of the voters personally to decide whether to refer the case to the DA."

"So I think you should be prepared for the same," he wrote.

In addition to the state inquiry, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman's office is running a criminal investigation. Dowless has denied any wrongdoing, but he has refused to speak with state investigators, and his lieutenants have said they collected ballots at his direction.

9th District: Dowless crew handled 1 in 5 absentee votes in Bladen County

John Harris testified that the 2016 absentee results in Bladen County were so strange he initially suspected a counting error. The county produced some 22 percent of the total mail-in vote for the district, but just 2 percent of the Election Day and in-person early votes, he emailed his parents the night of that election.

"This smacks of something gone awry," he said in the email, one of several put into evidence at Wednesday's hearing.

John Harris said he also saw an oddly high number of black voters in Bladen County casting mail-in ballots in a GOP primary. It seemed to him, based on the dates absentee ballots were mailed, that someone was stockpiling them and mailing them in batches.

Mark Harris has told reporters that he shared concerns about the 2016 Bladen County results with one of his attorneys. John Harris said that was likely Josh Howard, who oversaw the campaign's recount request after a narrow loss to Pittenger.

Howard is a former chairman of the State Board of Elections.

Mark Harris has also said his attorney advised against pushing the issue and that he saw hiring Dowless himself as a potential boost for his 2018 run.

Dowless would be paid more than $100,000 by the campaign without producing records to document his absentee ballot work, Harris campaign consultant Andy Yates testified this week.

9th District consultant: Now I don't know what to believe

John Harris said the decision to pay Dowless through Yates' firm, Charlotte-based Red Dome Group, seemed to flow from concerns he raised with Yates. An attorney for the State Board of Elections asked Yates about that conversation during his own testimony Wednesday.

"I do not recall ever having a conversation with him about that," Yates said. "If that conversation occurred, I do not recall it."

Mark Harris declined to answer questions as he left the hearing Wednesday. One of his attorneys, David Freedman, promised answers in his client's testimony Thursday. He said the legal team had John Harris' emails with them Wednesday and was prepared to share them with the state board.

Freedman said he only learned John Harris would testify "recently."

John Harris testified that he found the emails in December, as the controversy heated up. He said he reached out to another of his father's attorneys to see whether the campaign considered them protected by attorney-client privilege. He said he eventually heard from Freedman that the campaign planned to release them to the state board.

John Harris said he then called the board's general counsel to say the emails would be produced and to make himself available for an interview. When the interview came, John Harris said he brought copies of the emails with him. He said he didn't know until Wednesday that the campaign hadn't produced them.

What's at stake in state investigation into alleged fraud in 9th Congressional District election

In addition to the June 2016 email questioning absentee results and the April 2017 email warning against hiring Dowless, John Harris produced an email chain with his father from November 2016, when then-Gov. Pat McCrory was fighting his loss to current Gov. Roy Cooper. One of the reasons: ballot fraud accusations in Bladen County.

Those concerns would eventually be dismissed by the state board and referred to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District after it came out that some of the complaints Dowless, as well as McCrory's legal team, had pushed against a local PAC called the Bladen County Improvement Association actually involved people working with Dowless.

The McCrory campaign sent out an email blast around this time, subject line: "Democrat Voting Fraud Scheme Uncovered."

John Harris forwarded it to his father with a note: "Preaching to the choir."

In his reply, Mark Harris noted that it was Dowless making the claim, "the same guy that Johnson paid to run the 'absentee ballot program' for him!"

"Guess he didn't like the Dems cutting into his business," Mark Harris wrote.