McCrae Dowless, who gained infamy in alleged role in 2018 NC election fraud, has died
Leslie McCrae Dowless, a Republican political operative whose involvement in what state authorities described as an election fraud scheme in Bladen County made national news in 2018, has died, his lawyer, Cynthia Singletary, confirmed on Sunday. He was 66.
Known throughout rural southeastern North Carolina for his political expertise and consulting work, Dowless gained infamy for his role in the 9th Congressional District election of 2018, when Republican Mark Harris appeared to defeat Dan McCready, a Democrat, by fewer than 1,000 votes. Almost immediately, though, the integrity of Harris’ victory came into question, with Dowless emerging at the center of a ballot-harvesting plot that eventually led the State Board of Elections to overturn Harris’ victory and order a new election.
Dan Bishop, another Republican, defeated McCready to win the seat in 2019.
Dowless, meanwhile, became the focal point of multiple criminal investigations. In September 2021, Dowless, then 65, was sentenced to six months in prison for theft of government property and Social Security fraud, federal charges that were tangential to the 2018 election fraud case. At the time of his death, Dowless was also awaiting trial on state charges of illegal ballot handling, conspiracy and obstruction of justice, all of which resulted from his work on Harris’ campaign in the lead-up to the 2018 election.
In a statement on Sunday, Lorrin Freeman, the Wake County district attorney who was the lead prosecutor in Dowless’ election fraud case, offered “our condolences” to Dowless’ family and said the charges against him would be dismissed.
“Unfortunately, Covid created a delay in the handling of this case like with many others,” Freeman said. “We had set a trial date of August and Mr. Dowless was entitled to the presumption of innocence through his day in court. There remain about six others charged related to this matter and we will be moving forward with those cases with the understanding that the State’s position was always that Mr. Dowless was the principal actor in coordinating the ballot process in question.”
WBTV was the first to report his death. The TV station reported that the cause was cancer.
Dowless’ get-out-the-vote operation involving absentee ballots in Bladen County was at the heart of the State Board of Elections challenge to Harris’ apparent victory over McCready in the 2018 general election. Workers for Dowless admitted to filling out absentee ballots, including votes in certain cases, and falsifying signatures on ballot forms.
Dowless was known throughout the southeastern North Carolina county and neighboring ones.
“Our county has 30,000 residents, and he knows probably 25,000 of them,” Jeff Smith, a sweepstakes parlor owner and Dublin town commissioner, told the News & Observer in 2019.
Dowless was the Bladen County soli and water conservation board vice chairman, an elected position, at the time. His deep knowledge of the rural counties was valuable to candidates, who often hailed from the more populous parts of the district around Mecklenburg County.
“Some people can quote ACC basketball statistics. He can quote political statistics ... just rattling off these figures of the kind of votes of each little township,” Whiteville attorney Harold “Butch” Pope told The News & Observer in 2019.
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This story was originally published April 24, 2022 at 6:04 PM with the headline "McCrae Dowless, who gained infamy in alleged role in 2018 NC election fraud, has died."
