Carmel-by-the-Sea, America’s favorite triple hyphenated city, is home to a little less than 4,000 people. The city maintains a contract with a local courier service to deliver mail to those who cannot make it to the post office.
With the April election looming, campaign materials for mayor candidate Steve Dallas have been found stapled to mail-in ballots.
The courier’s contract states that they will make deliveries to up to 125 residents a month. While 125 mail-in ballots would equal about 3.1% of Carmel’s population, only a dozen or so ballots had the materials attached.
Now the Monterey County DA’s office is investigating, with Chief Assistant DA Berkley Brannon saying "It appears there were a very small number of mail-in ballots that had campaign materials stapled to them. It would appear an employee at the mail service stapled these on their own initiative."
Steve Dallas said he was “shocked and mortified” in response to the news.
Brannon said that based on preliminary legal research, it might not be a criminal act according to the law. “… is there any crime for stapling a piece of campaign literature to a mail-in ballot? We’re taking a look at that right now. We’re not sure it is crime."
Dallas said he was campaigning at the post office and saw the courier leaving the post office. "I asked if he could distribute a copy of my campaign flyer to those he was making deliveries to," Dallas wrote in his statement. Dallas elaborated that he did not ask for or expect his materials to be stapled to the actual ballots.
CityNews will be sure to update you on how this election turns out.
More on this Trouble-By-The-Sea can be found here.