In November 2018, Baptist preacher Mark Harris beat the odds, narrowly fending off a blue wave in the sprawling Ninth District of North Carolina. But word soon got around that something fishy was going on in rural Bladen County. At the center of the mess was a local political operative named McCrae Dowless. Dowless had learned the ins and outs of the absentee ballot system from Democrats before switching over to the Republican Party. Bladen County's vote-collecting cottage industry made national headlines, led to multiple election fraud indictments, toppled North Carolina GOP leadership, and left hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians without congressional representation for nearly a year. In The Vote Collectors, Michael Graff and Nick Ochsner tell the story of the political shenanigans in Bladen County, exposing the shocking vulnerability of local elections and explaining why our present systems are powerless to monitor and prevent fraud. In their hands, this tale of rural corruption becomes a fascinating narrative of the long clash of racism and electioneering-and a larger story about the challenges to democracy in the rural South. At a time rife with accusations of election fraud, The Vote Collectors shows the reality of election stealing in one southern county, where democracy was undermined the old-fashioned way: one absentee ballot at a time.
Michael Graff is a reporter at Axios Charlotte. Nick Ochsner is chief investigative reporter at WBTV in Charlotte, NC.
"The Vote Collectors, , an intense nonfiction drama, sings like a novel and shocks like a rigged court case. It's sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking--always building, never slow. Michael Graff and Nick Ochsner describe, dead-on, the rural America that brings discomfort to comfortable city folks -- the real, up-close rural America where small-minded power brokers gather in small rooms to work and rework a system in which justice has become a sad, outdated myth. The Vote Collectors is about a struggling rural county, and thus it is about a struggling South, and thus it is about a struggling America--where unleashed politicians successfully goad citizens to loathe each other. Drop your cable 'news' shows; read a book that is about real things. Our times are too much like 1860 to sit home and watch TV." -- Clyde Edgerton, author of Walking across Egypt and The Night Train "[A] fascinating read. Recommended for readers interested in politics and North Carolina."--Library Journal "A fascinating narrative of the long clash of racism and electioneering--and a larger story about the challenges to democracy in the rural South."--WRAL "A fine-grained and vivid account of the 2018 North Carolina congressional race that was overturned because of electoral fraud...Throughout, the authors weave in intriguing bits of local color and draw trenchant connections to fraud claims in the 2020 presidential election. This doggedly reported chronicle sheds light on America's political dysfunctions."--Publishers Weekly "Graff and Ochsner's narrative moves like a novel, tying its story to the county's past. . . . Thorough and compelling."--Foreword Reviews "In The Vote Collectors, that scandal--which made national headlines for months--is secondary to a more comprehensive examination of its historical, economic, and political antecedents in Bladen County and oft-forgotten eastern North Carolina. . . . The authors unfurl the story in three parts: a deep probe into the history of post-Civil War eastern North Carolina sandwiched by more recent developments in Bladen County, leading up to and after the 2018 election."--Charlotte Magazine "In the deft hands of these two storytellers, The Vote Collectors would be an ideal selection for college courses on North Carolina politics and history, electoral politics, or southern politics."--North Carolina Historical Review "In-depth reporting and journalistic flair. . . . A useful book for policymakers and politics junkies."--Kirkus Reviews "On the heels of one of the most volatile presidential elections in recent memory, The Vote Collectors is a pointed look at the 2018 congressional election in North Carolina's Bladen County. . . . [The book] uses this story to explore the weakness of current voting systems, specifically in the South, given the historical scars of racism in elections and voting rights. . . . Recommended for readers interested in politics and American history, as well as the intersection of voting rights."--Affinity Magazine "To understand the truth behind the voter fraud accusations that continue to roil the country, there's no better place to look than Bladen County, N.C., and no better person to talk to than charming, chain-smoking McCrae Dowless. Through their exclusive access to McCrae, Ochsner and Graff are able to unravel the secrets of Bladen County's election drama, a tale that stretches all the way from Reconstruction, through the Voting Rights Act, to today's election-integrity wars. The Vote Collectors reveals what happened in this one county in North Carolina while delivering an urgent warning about what's happening everywhere else." -- Zoe Chace, producer, This American Life and host of The Improvement Association
