Wait...so the State Board of Elections investigated this Dowless guy back in 2016...he admitted to tampering absentee ballots...and then nothing? The media (NPR) even covered it!!
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/606/just-what-i-wanted/act-two-0
Highlights from the Transcript (get ready for some epic GOP Boogeyman projection!):
[Zoe Chace (NPR)] "The man leading the hunt for voter fraud in North Carolina is Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party.
...
In the real world, Dallas looks for voter fraud, he will tell you, as a matter of principle. There was also a numbers game going on this November. The Republican governor of North Carolina refused to concede the election for weeks because it was such a close race. At the moment I met Dallas, the governor was down just 8,500 votes out of 4.7 million. There were other close races also.
Dallas was out running down every claim of voter fraud around the state. His team accused people of voting twice. That was dismissed. People who voted when they were dead, that was dismissed. Felons who voted.
...
The day we talk, Dallas has a smoking gun, a few hundred ballots in the southeast of the state, lots with the same handwriting on them. Jackpot. He takes a breath.”
[Dallas Woodhouse]
“They do realize that 300 or 400 write-in votes can't be done by one person. They do realize that's illegal.”
[Zoe Chace]
“Here's what happened. Down in Bladen County, North Carolina, this guy Brian was going through absentee balance at the Board of Elections. He's a board member, a Republican. His job was to scrutinize each ballot as it came out of the machine. He's heard a lot about voter fraud, never seen it before, but he believes it's widespread. He's heard a lot about it on the news. His eyes are peeled.
And then he notices something. Way down at the bottom of the ballot, there was room for a write-in candidate, the county soil and water district supervisor. And he kept seeing the name Franklin Graham.”
[Brian]
“And it looked like the same handwriting a lot of times.”
...
[Zoe Chace]
“It wasn't just one person's handwriting. It was around a dozen people. Dallas has a term for what he thinks this is. He calls it an absentee ballot mill. This is what he pictures when he hears about all these ballots with the same handwriting on them. Key Democratic operatives, running around searching for old people who barely know their own names and then filling out ballots for them. A blatant scheme, Dallas thinks, that gins up votes for the Democrats. And the Democratic governor, remember, is only up by a couple thousand votes.”
[Dallas Woodhouse]
“Should the election board find that these are absentee ballot mills, with the purpose of fraudulent voting, those people should go to jail. They should go to jail. They should spend the first term of the Trump administration behind bars.”
...
[Zoe Chace]
"The governor's lawyers come off a little sloppy. Because a few hours in, the complaint starts to fall apart in this kind of mortifying way. It happens when the person who actually filed the complaint against the Bladen County Improvement Association PAC takes the stand."
[Man 5]
"How you doing, sir?"
[Mccrae Dowless]
"Doing fine, Mr. Michael."
[Zoe Chace]
"McCrae Dowless. He's actually the guy who won the soil and water supervisor race in Bladen County. And he takes the stand looking like he's not quite ready for this. He doesn't have a suit. He's got a big beard, skinny guy, windbreaker. And once he's up there being questioned by one of the Democrats on the Board of Elections, he seems amazingly unfamiliar with his own case."
[Man 5]
"You allege that there was a scheme that was taking place in Bladen County, correct? That's the words that you used-- "blatant scheme"? What did you mean by that?"
[Mccrae Dowless]
"Scheme?"
[Man 5]
"You used the words, "resulting from a blatant scheme."
[Mccrae Dowless]
"Are you saying I used the words or the attorney that wrote that up used the words?"
[Man 5]
"Well, it's got your signature at the end."
[Mccrae Dowless]
"It's got my signature here on it. But as far as writing that personal-- writing that up, I didn't do that. The attorney did. The attorney was the one that drew the protest up."
...
[Zoe Chace]
"The complaint is dismissed, 3 to 2. Dreams of the perfect Republican Christmas gift melt away. I can't say for sure, but in talking to reporters, election board members, activists, it seems that no one in North Carolina was able to find a single case of true voter fraud, where someone deliberately impersonates someone else, casts a ballot in their name, real fraud, except possibly one case. One. And that one comes out in a very strange twist during this same hearing, just not where the Republicans were looking. One of the board members starts asking McCrae, their incumbent Republican soil and water supervisor, about whether his side had committed voter fraud.
...
Here's what tumbles out of McCrae under the board's questioning. He had some people working for him, getting out the vote-- volunteers, McCrae calls them. The volunteers, though, were allegedly getting paid for each ballot they turned in. That is illegal. One of the voters who signed an affidavit said that Get Out the Vote workers came by and had her family request absentee ballots. But then they never received their absentee ballots in the mail like they were supposed to. Then, when the family went to vote on election day, they were told they'd already voted. In essence, McCrae's getting accused of paying people to obtain absentee ballots, fill them out, and cast their votes on someone else's behalf. That, for sure, is illegal. McCrae says he didn't do anything wrong.
An election board member then calls for further criminal investigation, what appears to be Republican voter fraud.
[Man 8]
"I will be making a motion, that any and all information that this board has in its possession shall be forwarded to the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina."
[Zoe Chace]
"The attorney could choose to keep looking into Horace as well, but the focus of the investigation seems to be what McCrae has just revealed. Two days later, the governor of North Carolina concedes the race to the Democrats. There are just no votes left to recount, no more fraud left to look into.
Dallas Woodhouse, the Republican fraud hunter, says there is still systemic voter fraud out there, stuff that's not being caught. And that is going to continue until the voting system itself changes. Right now, Dallas would say there are too many opportunities for voter fraud, too many ways that people could pretend to be someone else. Right now, you show up to vote with no ID, they let you vote. You show up at the wrong precinct, they let you vote."
[Dallas Woodhouse]
"Our side does think the voters have some responsibilities. And the best example is showing up to the right place to vote on election day. I do think that's a fair statement."
[Zoe Chace]
"I think that is the exact thing that Democrats will point to saying, that disenfranchises our people because our people--"
[Dallas Woodhouse]
"How does it disenfranchise their people?"
[Zoe Chace]
"Because their people--"
[Dallas Woodhouse]
"See, they have such a negative, horrible, demeaning view of their own people, that they can't show up at the right place to vote."
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