The State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement warned the U.S. Department of Justice in early 2017 that "efforts to manipulate election results" in Bladen County would likely continue and asked the local U.S. attorney to get involved.

The January 2017 letter followed a public hearing the board held a month earlier that featured testimony from McCrae Dowless, the Bladen County man now at the center of multiple investigations into absentee ballot results in the 9th Congressional District and other southeast North Carolina races.

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"Our findings to date suggest that individuals and potentially groups of individuals engaged in efforts to manipulate election results through the absentee ballot process," state elections director Kim Strach wrote in the letter. "The evidence we have obtained suggest that these efforts may have taken place in the past and, if not addressed, will likely continue for future elections."

That the board referred these issues to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina in early 2017 was no secret. The vote to do so came in public, at the end of the December hearing. The board released the actual referral letter for the first time Friday.

It's not clear what follow up the U.S. Attorney's Office pursued. U.S. Attorney Bobby Higdon's spokeswoman declined comment this week, and the Department of Justice typically doesn't confirm or deny the existence of investigations.

The letter was actually sent to John S. Bruce, who was then the acting U.S. attorney for the district as the Trump Administration prepared to nominate a replacement. Bruce now works for the state board, where he's an attorney in the investigations unit.

Bruce declined comment Friday, via a statement from board spokesman Patrick Gannon, who said in an email that Department of Justice policy generally forbids former U.S. attorneys from discussing "confidential information learned while with DOJ."

Higdon was confirmed as U.S. attorney in September 2017. Bruce joined the state board in June 2018.

Bruce is not participating in any board investigations of the 2016 elections due to DOJ restrictions, said Josh Lawson, general counsel for the board, but he is free to work on the 2018 elections inquiry.

With an ongoing investigation holding up final results in the 2018 9th Congressional District race, there's been some finger pointing over why an apparent pattern of election tampering wasn't addressed before now. Dowless' own testimony in the December 2016 hearing raised suspicions that he was sending people door to door to collect absentee ballots, which is illegal and is just the sort of scheme investigators have keyed in on in their 9th District inquiry.

Other evidence suggests Dowless took cash under the table to work a local sheriff's race in 2014. He has worked for years in local elections in Bladen County, becoming known as an operative who could deliver absentee ballot results for Democrats and Republicans alike.

Dowless worked this past year for Republican Mark Harris, who seemed to beat Democrat Dan McCready by about 900 votes in the 9th District.

In her letter, Strach offered to make herself and Joan Fleming, the board's chief investigator then and now, available to the U.S. Attorney's Office, along with Fleming's case files.

"Our investigations team has conducted a lengthy investigation into various allegations of absentee ballot fraud in Bladen County," Strach wrote.

Conversations with a number of law enforcement agencies followed that January 2017 letter, Gannon has said. But with little apparent movement on the criminal end, the state board put together a lengthy report documenting its findings.

That report was released to the public earlier this week. It was sent to law enforcement in January 2018, Gannon said.

Bladen County District Attorney Jon David referred the matter to Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman that month to avoid conflicts of interest. Freeman has confirmed her investigation of 2016 elections conduct continues and that it involves the 2018 elections too.

Freeman said earlier this week that she wished her office had been involved earlier.