Elections Board Finds Evidence of ‘Coordinated’ Fraud to Support Anti-LGBT Preacher’s Election to Congress

There are supposed to be 435 Members of Congress, but one of those seats is empty. The North Carolina elections board is refusing to certify the election of Republican Mark Harris after stunning irregularities led to an investigation of his slim 905-vote lad over Democrat Dan McCready.

Kim Strach, the executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections “revealed Monday that state officials had uncovered a ‘coordinated’ and ‘unlawful’ effort to collect absentee ballots on behalf of” Harris, HuffPost reports.

At a public hearing Monday, Strach “said investigators had evidence that McCrae Dowless, a political operative working on behalf of the Harris campaign, filled out and mailed in incomplete or blank ballots from both his office and home. She said Dowless paid people in cash to collect requests for absentee ballots and the ballots themselves. The state board also has evidence, she said, that Dowless paid people to falsify signatures on absentee ballots indicating that they had witnessed those ballots being filled out.”

Dowless “is a convicted felon who faced jail time for fraud and perjury,” The Charlotte-Observer reported in December. One woman told a local reporter Dowless paid her to collect absentee ballots, which is illegal. She had said she was not aware it was illegal because Dowless had been doing it for years. The woman, Cheryl Kinlaw, said Dowless “had stacks” of absentee ballots on his desk.

Strach said Harris, who is a far right wing anti-LGBT North Carolina preacher, paid Dowless $131,275.

Harris, according to Right Wing Watch’s Peter Montgomery, “has a track record of opposing LGBTQ equality and abortion rights. Harris was an ally of the anti-LGBTQ Benham brothers in opposition to a Charlotte nondiscrimination law, and he was a driving force behind the campaign that put a ban on same-sex couples getting married into the state constitution; his First Baptist Church contributed more than $50,000 to the campaign. Harris, who says being gay is ‘a choice,’ has said the anti-equality amendment was not about discrimination but about ‘standing up for the values and principles that have been a part of the fabric of American society.'”

Last year First Lady Karen Pence actively campaigned for Harris.