“McCrae Dowless pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to two crimes stemming from the investigation into the absentee ballot fraud scheme he’s accused of running in Bladen County and other parts of southeastern North Carolina. Neither of the charges dealt directly with the election fraud allegations, however. Instead, he pleaded guilty to two of the four charges he faced related to Social Security disability fraud, and prosecutors agreed to drop the other two charges. Dowless entered the plea minutes before jury selection was about to begin in his trial in Greenville.”

“He also agreed Monday to pay back up to $14,000 to the government as restitution for the disability payments he fraudulently took, but he won’t know for two more months what other punishment he might face. Sentencing in his case was set for the week of Aug. 23. The disability fraud charges came as part of an investigation into Dowless for allegedly running an absentee ballot scheme in which he and some assistants would collect people’s ballots and, in some cases, fraudulently sign them or even fill in votes for races that the voters had left blank, officials say. The accusations against him led to the 2018 9th District congressional race, between Republican Mark Harris and Democrat Dan McCready, being redone without Harris. Harris’s campaign hired a group called Red Dome Consulting, which in turn hired Dowless. Prosecutors said that Dowless took – and tried to hide – more than $130,000 from Red Dome Group, even though he was also getting Social Security benefits for claiming to be too disabled to work” – Raleigh News and Observer.