[ad_1]
Breaking News Emails
Receive last minute alerts and special reports. News and stories that matter, delivered in the morning on weekdays.
By Leigh Ann Caldwell
RALEIGH, NC – A key witness said Monday that she had engaged in fraudulent and illegal activity involving mail-order polls during a congressional race in North Carolina as part of of a voting operation in favor of the Republican candidate in Congress, in an unresolved race.
In her sincere testimony to the North Carolina Elections Council, Lisa Britt stated that she was paid for collecting ballot papers in the 2018 elections by McCrae Dowless, a political officer hired by the Republican candidate's consultants. at Congress Mark Harris.
Britt stated that some of the ballots she had collected were unsealed and incomplete and testified that she had filled in the blank options for Republican candidates – a vote violation confession contrary to the North Carolina law.
The state council has been investigating allegations of such irregularities since before last November's elections, when Harris got 905 votes more than the Democratic Party Dan McCready and twice refused to certify. the results.
Britt's testimonials, as well as those of a handful of other witnesses and the findings of the investigation unveiled on Monday, depicted the considerable efforts made to harvest the mail ballots, where Dowless had made calling on a cohort of workers to collect a large number of ballot and ballot application forms. .
The first day of what should be two or three days of testimony included a presentation of the state investigation, which revealed a significant questionable activity in two rural counties of the ninth congressional district – Bladen and Robeson.
"We believe that the evidence we will present today will show that a co-ordinated, illegal and resource-intensive correspondence voting system has been implemented in the general elections in Bladen and Robeson counties." Said Kim Westbrook Strach, executive director of the North Carolina Elections Council. .
"We will also show in our investigation that efforts have been made to impede this investigation and the testimony given to the hearing," Strach said.
At the end of the hearing, the board will determine whether it will certify the election or whether it will hold a new election. A new election could be called if the board finds "irregularities" that "alter the results of the entire election and cast doubt on its fairness".
The survey is centered around a key figure, Dowless, who was hired by the Red Dome board group for a "vote-lifting" operation as part of the Harris campaign, which paid Red Dome for his services.
Strach revealed that Red Dome paid Dowless $ 131,375 for the 2018 primary and general elections, including $ 83,693 for the general election.
According to Monday's testimony, Dowless had two components to its operation: the collection of postal voting requests and the collection of ballots. According to the results of the investigation, he and his associates garnered at least 788 ballot requests in Bladen County and 231 in nearby Robeson County.
Britt, a probationer who has admitted to voting in the 2018 election despite being banned from doing so in North Carolina, is Dowless's daughter-in-law. She said that they had a very close father-daughter relationship, but she testified against Dowless, saying that she had simply followed the instructions that he had ordered her to do.
"I did not think my dad would send me to do anything illegal," said Britt.
Britt said she had received between $ 150 and $ 175 to collect 50 mail ballots, plus food and gas. This salary scale is then increased to a flat rate of $ 200 per week as work has become more difficult. "Many people do not want to give you their ballot by mail," she said.
Admitting illegal vote manipulation, Britt said she would fill out the ballots she had collected but was not completely filled. She recalled that she remembered that all incomplete ballots contained non-votes for the lowest positions and that she would fill any choices omitted with "a vote for the Republican".
Britt testified that once she had collected the requests for postal voting, she would have signed them and delivered them to Dowless, either in her office or at her home. She said that she would also make a copy of the applications she was requesting so that she knew where to go back to retrieve the actual ballots from the voters.
She also stated that Dowless had informed her, as well as others, of techniques for not "throwing red flags" at the Electoral Board, including by placing the stamp in the proper direction, signing the signatures of witnesses in the same color of ink and sending ballots by mail in small numbers.
Britt insisted Harris was unaware of the operation, saying he was "innocent." No evidence presented at the hearing indicates that Harris knew how Dowless conducted his work.
"I think you have an innocent in this whole affair who had no idea what was going on and he's really trapped in the transaction here and it's Mr. Mark Harris," he said. Britt.
The mother of Britt and Sandra Dowless, Dowless's ex-wife, said they heard a phone call between Dowless and Harris sometime "before mid-September."
She added that Dowless had told Harris that he was leading in Bladen County because he had gone to the Bladen Elections Council and had been considering the votes. She added that Harris had asked if this was legal and Dowless replied, "Anyone can get the same data."
Britt also stated that Dowless had asked him, as well as half a dozen other people, to "stand by" and not reveal anything to the investigators. Last Thursday, according to Britt, Dowless urged him not to answer the questions asked at the hearing.
Britt said that she went to Dowless last Thursday night at her request. Once there, he sent him and his mother a message to repeat at the hearing: "I can tell you that nothing was done during the elections and that McCrae Dowless never told me to do anything and to my knowledge, he has never done anything wrong, but I'm taking the 5th amendment because I do not have any. Lawyer, and I feel that you will try to trip me up. I take the fifth.
The council examined the irregularities of the postal vote, the disclosure of the results of the advance vote and the security of the elections. They found that 595 people had not returned the ballots in Bladen County and another 1,493 in Robeson County, a significant number given the low margin between the two candidates.
When asked if she knew that she had done anything wrong, Britt replied in the affirmative.
"I feel that I have acted badly. Did I know I was wrong? No, ma'am, I did not do it. Yes, I feel that I have done wrong, said Britt.
When asked if she thought Dowless had done anything wrong, Britt replied, "Yes, ma'am."
Towards the end of the day, McCrae Dowless himself, who attended the hearing and listened to the testimony, was called as the last witness. Dowless's lawyer, Cynthia Singletary, asked if he was required to testify, which, according to the board of directors, would have granted him the immunity provided for by the law of North Carolina. The board then met with Dowless in camera, after which he refused to compel him to testify. His lawyer did not allow him to testify voluntarily and he was fired.
Rich Gardella contributed.
[ad_2]
Source link