A man at the center of a ballot fraud case involving a congressional race in North Carolina is now under arrest. Leslie McCrae Dowless was booked Wednesday on charges of illegal ballot handling and conspiracy in the 2018 Republican primary and in the 2016 elections. He and four people who'd worked for him were also charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice.

North Carolina law makes it illegal for anyone other than a voter or their immediate family to handle an absentee ballot before it is sealed and mailed.

Dowless was arrested less than a week after the state elections board decided his work on behalf of Harris, starting with the 2018 primary, tainted the GOP candidate's apparent victory in November. The board ordered a new election but hasn't set a date.

Harris is not running in the new election, but his Democratic opponent from November, Dan McCready, is.

The charges came a year after state elections investigators published a report detailing that Dowless paid cash-starved rural neighbors to bring him voters' ballots in the 2016 elections. By that time, Harris had already recruited and paid Dowless a retainer to replicate the magic formula that resulted in one of Harris' Republican rivals scoring an incredible 98 percent of the mail-in ballots in the 2016 primary.

Prosecutors are still investigating evidence of ballot tampering by Dowless and others during last fall's congressional election in the mostly rural 9th District, which includes part of Charlotte and extends eastward across several counties.

The indictment represents the first charges in a scandal that has cast doubt on election integrity and will leave a congressional seat unfilled for months.

The crimes "served to undermine the integrity of the absentee ballot process and the public's confidence in the outcome of the electoral process," the indictment said.