Nearly two years before election fraud allegations roiled a North Carolina congressional race this fall, state election officials warned prosecutors they had evidence of efforts to manipulate the absentee ballot vote in rural Bladen County and sought their action, new documents and interviews show.

But frustrated state officials said their alerts about what occurred in the 2016 election – including a formal referral letter sent to the U.S. attorney in January 2017 and later meetings with state and federal investigators – yielded little movement by the local district attorney or the U.S. attorney’s office to probe the allegations.

Leslie McCrae Dowless, who ran a get-out-the-vote effort for a Republican's campaign in North Carolina's primary and general elections, isn't answering questions. Justin Kase Conder/Washington Post

There were “several calls and in-person meetings between our investigators and federal agents working with the U.S. attorney’s office,” State Board of Election’s general counsel Josh Lawson said Friday. But there was “no indication of active work by them.”

The revelation that state election officials had raised multiple alarms with law enforcement agencies raises fresh questions about whether prosecutors adequately scrutinized the allegations – and whether they could have headed off similar activities that upended this year’s race in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District between Republican Mark Harris and Democrat Dan McCready.

Harris defeated McCready by just 905 votes in November, but the state board declined to certify the results amid allegations that illegal tampering with absentee ballots may have tainted the outcome.

At the center of the controversy is a Bladen County political operative named Leslie McCrae Dowless, who worked for the Harris campaign this year. His alleged role in ballot tampering in 2016 was a key piece of the information that state officials relayed to prosecutors, according to documents and people familiar with the case.

Dowless has declined repeated requests for interviews.

Republican leaders in North Carolina have accused the election board itself of not adequately investigating past allegations of fraud in Bladen County. In response, the board published a 278-page report it had prepared earlier this year for local and federal prosecutors.

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