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Woman who collected absentee ballots in 9th Congressional District race says she feels duped

Veteran Bladen County political operative McCrae Dowless has become a central figure in a state investigation into possible voting irregularities in the 9th Congressional District race, which remains up in the air a month after Election Day.

Posted Updated

By
Amanda Lamb
, WRAL reporter
RALEIGH, N.C. — Veteran Bladen County political operative McCrae Dowless has become a central figure in a state investigation into possible voting irregularities in the 9th Congressional District race, which remains up in the air a month after Election Day.

Dowless, who is known for get-out-the-vote campaigns based heavily on absentee ballots, was named in two of the affidavits the North Carolina Democratic Party used last week to push for an evidentiary hearing into possible voter fraud in the 9th District race.

Cheryl Kinlaw and Ginger Eason said Tuesday that Dowless hired them to collect absentee ballots and drop them at the Bladenboro campaign headquarters of Mark Harris, the Republican 9th District candidate.

"We were asked to pick up absentee ballots. He told us he would put gas in our car and [provide] a little bit of money during the week to help out," Kinlaw said.

The two women said they were paid $75 to $100 to pick up 50 ballots a week. Voters filled them out, and the women witnessed them, but the envelopes they were put in weren't sealed.

"We did not know it was illegal to pick them up," Kinlaw said, adding that she has no idea what happened to the ballots after they were dropped off. "Once I dropped them off at his office, we assumed he was putting them in the mail."

According to documents posted online Tuesday by the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement, Dowless signed for turning in 580 applications for absentee ballots between Aug. 22 and Oct. 29.

About 3,400 requested absentee ballots were never returned across the 9th District, which stretches along the North Carolina-South Carolina border from Charlotte to Robeson County before turning north into Bladen and Cumberland counties, according to elections board documents.

Dowless didn't answer the door when a WRAL News crew went to his home Tuesday.

WRAL also tried to contact Charlotte-based Red Dome Group, which worked for the Harris campaign and which hired Dowless, but Red Dome owner Andy Yates didn't respond to emails or text messages.

Harris said in a statement last week that the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement should certify him as the winner of the 9th District race, even as the board continues to investigate the suspicious absentee ballots. He hasn't addressed his campaign's relationship with Dowless.

Democratic 9th District candidate Dan McCready, who conceded the race on the day after Election Day, hasn't made any public statement on the investigation.

Emma Shipman, 87, said a woman came to her home in Bladenboro before the election, asked her to fill out her absentee ballot and told her she would turn it in for her. Shipman said that procedure struck her as improper, and she wants to know if ballot tampering played a role in the 9th District election.

"Every vote is definitely important," she said. "I pray to God that they get to the bottom of it."

The state elections board plans to hold a hearing on the suspicious absentee ballots sometime before Dec. 21. Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman is also looking at the situation, as well as voting irregularities in Bladen County in the 2016 election, following a request from Bladen County District Attorney Jon David.

Kinlaw said she regrets the role she played in throwing an election into chaos.

"My stomach just dropped," she said of learning about the state investigation. "I was like, 'What? Please tell me we didn't have anything to do with that.'"

She said she feels Dowless duped her and others.

"I feel like he picked people he knew needed a little extra money for bills or something to get them to do this," she said.

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