DA investigates alleged ballot tampering in Carmel.

In Carmel, most candidates for mayor and City Council run on a platform that includes honoring and preserving Carmel's idiosyncrasies. There are no streetlights, trees grow out of the middle of streets, houses have names and not numbers and there's no mail delivery; instead, everyone gets a post office box. 

The post office is a popular campaign stop for candidates in the upcoming April 12 election. 

Years ago, Carmel started contracting with a courier service to deliver mail to residents who couldn't get to the post office regularly or didn't want to; in the latest contract with Peninsula Messenger Service, signed Sept. 6, 2015, Carmel agrees to pay $142,125 over three years, covering home delivery for up to 125 clients a month. 

Now the Monterey County District Attorney's office is investigating Peninsula Messenger Service for allegedly attaching Steve Dallas' mayoral campaign materials to mail-in ballots. 

"It appears there were a very small number of mail-in ballots that had campaign materials stapled to them," Chief Assistant District Attorney Berkley Brannon says. "It would appear an employee at the mail service stapled these on their own initiative."

Dallas, currently a councilman, is running against fellow-Councilman Ken Talmage for mayor.  

"I’m shocked and mortified," Dallas says. 

Brannon says Dallas himself is not under investigation, and even apparent wrongdoing by the courier service might not be criminal, based on preliminary legal research at the DA's office.

"The question is, 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." 

Besides, Brannon adds, "It doesn’t appear it was done maliciously with any kind of nefarious intent." 

The number of ballots in question is likely just about a dozen, though there may be more. 

Representatives of Peninsula Messenger Service were not immediately available for comment Monday afternoon. 

Dallas says he learned about the matter Saturday, and he hand-delivered a statement Monday to both the DA's office and to the Monterey County Elections Department detailing what happened from his perspective. 

(In another idiosyncrasy, Carmel runs its own elections, and contracts out for the mechanics of sending out, collecting and counting ballots; this year, Monterey County Elections is the contractor.)

In Dallas' account, he was hanging out at the post office, a popular Carmel campaign stop, talking to voters when a Peninsula Messenger Service employee was walking out. 

"I asked if he could distribute a copy of my campaign flyer to those he was making deliveries to," Dallas wrote in his statement. 

"He assured me that there would be no difficult in doing so. I saw him the very next day and offered him a bottle of wine as a thank you for his assistance." 

Dallas says he didn't ask or expect that his materials would be stapled to the ballots themselves. 

"This messenger's conduct is shocking and I sincerely offer my apologies for this regrettable incident," Dallas went on in his written statement. 

On Election Day, campaign materials are not allowed within 100 feet of polling places in order to prevent influencing voters. Elections Code doesn't spell out similar rules for mail-in ballots, where it's customary that candidates' paid materials will arrive in a voter's mailbox on the same day. 

But Elections Code does specify it's a felony if someone "tampers with, interferes with, or attempts to interfere with, the correct operation of, or willfully damages in order to prevent the use of, any voting machine, voting device, voting system, vote tabulating device, or ballot tally software program source codes."