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RALEIGH, N.C. – TThe Republican in the last indecisive US Congress election ignored his son's repeated warnings against the hiring of a shady political operator now accused of illegally collecting ballots in a rural county. from North Carolina and throwing the GOP's campaign into limbo, said Wednesday the young man.
Contradicting the public statements of congressional candidate Mark Harris that he would never have suspected that his campaign had deployed an agent in the rural county of Bladen, who had collected the ballots and handed them over when he wished, John Harris testified before a special hearing of the state's election council that had warned his father about Leslie McCrae Dowless's operation on several occasions since mid-2016.
John Harris said his warnings had been overturned as Republicans in the region had recommended Dowless to Mark Harris, who was preparing for a major revenge against incumbent Robert Pittenger. His parents met Dowless in April 2017, when the officer insisted that his method for optimizing the results of the mail-in voting was legal and based on local relationships.
"I think they lied to them and they believed the person who lied to them," John Harris told his parents. "I will also say that they were comparing what I had provided in terms of analysis to other people that they respected who subscribed to Mr. Dowless's behavior. agree with their final assessment? No. I thought what he was doing was illegal, and I was right. "
The Chief Electoral Officer in North Carolina said Monday that Dowless had conducted an illegal and well-funded ballot operation while working for Mark Harris in the 2018 election cycle. Bladen County said during the special hearing before the state election council that they were instructed to forge signatures, to collect blank or incomplete ballots and even to vote for local candidates who did not win.
Some residents of Bladen County also mentioned in sworn affidavits that Dowless has also ruled out ballot papers by Democrat Dan McCready. He overtook Harris by 905 votes on about 280,000 of the votes cast in the November election, but the race was not validated after the release of accusations against Dowless. The hearing produced no evidence that the ballots were thrown away.
Dowless declined to testify this week after the election committee refused to grant him immunity from prosecution based on what he could say. Dowless was convicted of the crime of insurance fraud and perjury, but Harris and his senior campaign consultant said that these charges had been missed during a brief background check.
John Harris stated that he had not played an important role in his father's campaign and had assumed that campaign staff and consultants had an obligation to closely monitor the Dowless performance.
Earlier, Mark Harris had told The Associated Press that he was looking for and hiring Dowless for delivering votes, including for a Republican rival at the 2016 GOP primary. Harris said he had discussed with a lawyer after this first hearing the opportunity to challenge the incredible results of Dowless for a GOP rival with postal ballots in Bladen County. The methods of Dowless in the 2016 general election were forwarded to federal prosecutors, who took no action.
Since October, John Harris has worked in the civilian division of the same office of the US Department of Justice in Raleigh. He stated that he testified voluntarily as a private citizen and not as an employee of the Department of Justice. Mark Harris seemed to tear up during his son's testimony.
John Harris testified that he initially warned his parents against Dowless after reviewing the voting data immediately after his father's first loss in 2016. Mark Harris had lost a Republican primary this June, during which his rival general public, Todd Johnson, who had used Dowless in this campaign, had won 98% of the votes cast in Bladen County.
In November 2016, John Harris sent a Republican fundraising e-mail as part of a fight for vote counting in the North Carolina governor's race. The email stated that a fraudulent Democratic party scheme in Bladen County had been discovered, following a Dowless complaint about wrongdoing by a local Black Empowerment Organization.
Mark Harris reacts to the email with a response to his son: "Amen!" But curiously, the guy who made the request, Dowess (sic), is the same guy that Johnson paid to handle the "mail-order voting program. "for him! I imagine that he did not like that Dems get involved in his business!"
Mark Harris is expected to testify Thursday. The election office should either declare him the winner in the 9th congressional district or hold new elections after the multi-day hearing.
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