Memo to President Trump and the Republican Party: This is what actual voting fraud looks like.

North Carolina election officials are detailing how a longtime political operative, working for a Republican candidate, conspired to steal last year’s election for the state’s Ninth Congressional District.

L. McCrae Dowless Jr. dispatched minions to collect absentee ballots from voters, fill them in, forge signatures and mail small batches from post offices near voters’ homes to avoid suspicion. Mr. Dowless’s effort is thought to have involved upward of 1,000 absentee ballots or request forms. The candidate he was serving, Mark Harris, has a 905-vote margin over the Democratic contender, Dan McCready.

At a hearing Monday of the state’s election board, its executive director shared the results of an investigation into how Mr. Dowless put together a “coordinated, unlawful and substantially resourced” effort to tamper with absentee ballots.

Witnesses involved in the fraud said Mr. Dowless encouraged them to give false testimony to obstruct the board’s investigation. One, Lisa Britt, who is Mr. Dowless’s former stepdaughter, provided investigators with a script she said Mr. Dowless gave her, which read: “I can tell you that I haven’t done anything wrong in the election, and McCrae Dowless has never told me to do anything wrong, and to my knowledge he has never done anything wrong. But I am taking the Fifth Amendment because I don’t have an attorney, and I feel like you will try to trip me up.”