WBTV (Charlotte NC) reporter Nick Ochsner tweets that McCrae Dowless, the accused operative at the center of the NC09 election fraud scandal, has been bailed out of the Raleigh detention center by Bladen County commissioner Ray Britt (R) after Dowless’ indictment and arrest yesterday on election fraud charges.
Britt himself has interesting connections to Dowless and the NC09 scandal. As the Winston-Salem Journal reported last December:
His 2016 campaign issued a $500 check to Dowless with the notation: “To get out the vote.”
The article further notes that, as a past chairman of the Bladen County Board of Elections, Republican Britt blocked board staffers’ requests for funds to improve physical security at the board office:
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security assessed the site shortly before this year’s election. In a report obtained by AP, the department said that because of the unlocked door, “sensitive voting materials are vulnerable.” It said the door should be eliminated and other security measures taken.
Ray Britt, a Bladen County commissioner who served as the board chairman until earlier this month, said in an interview that security improvements were unnecessary.
“We’ve never had any problems,” said Britt, a Republican.
Nothing quite says “don’t y’all rat us out none, hear?” quite like a Republican pol bailing out an election fraud artist he himself has previously hired to work election magic for his campaign...and who literally insisted on leaving the board of elections’ ballot room door unlocked because, shoot, who needs locks in neighborly Bladen County?
Dowless is, most likely, looking at some serious prison time in his future. But so too should be all the crooked Republican pols in NC09, like Mark Harris and Ray Britt, who have winked and nodded, paid for his services, left the doors unlocked for him, and now bailed him out.