Resident didn’t try to vote twice

Talk about it

A report by the South Dakota Department of Criminal Investigation has cleared a local man of allegations he attempted to vote twice in the recent general election.

The findings, reviewed by the Grand Forks County State’s Attorney’s Office, said that “there is no extrinsic evidence that Mr. (Cal) Dupree voted twice. There is no probable cause that an offense was committed.”

The investigative process started on Election Day when an absentee ballot signed by Cal Dupree, Jamestown, was presented to the absentee precinct election workers. It was found that Dupree’s name was already checked off on the poll list.

The investigative report said it was a clerical error.

“I believed the situation regarding the belief that Dupree had voted twice was a clerical error and Dupree’s name may have been marked off the roll inadvertently when processing another voter’s ballot,” the investigator wrote in the report.

Local election officials agreed.

“The clerk had inadvertently marked off this person’s name,” said Noel Johnson, election administrator for Stutsman County. “They didn’t recall checking it off and we didn’t want to take time to straighten it out at the time. We thought it would be dealt with during the Canvassing Board meeting.”

However, Judy Graves, one of the election workers involved with the absentee voting process, made a complaint to the North Dakota Secretary of State’s Office. They referred it to the Stutsman County State’s Attorney’s Office for investigation.

“When Judy Graves complained that Dupree had voted twice it suggested wrongdoing by Cal but also a crack in the local election process,” Fremgen said. “Here we had a Bureau of Criminal Investigations agent (Dupree), who knows all the local investigators, and the county election process to be investigated.”

Fremgen viewed a local investigation as a conflict of interest so he referred the case to the North Dakota Attorney General’s Office. Because the BCI is a department of the AG’s office they also saw the investigation as a conflict and requested the assistance of the South Dakota Attorney General’s Office, which sent an investigator to Jamestown about a week after the election.

Fremgen also requested the investigative report be analyzed by the Grand Forks State’s Attorney’s Office to make sure there could be no questions of local bias in the process.

“We wanted to make sure the investigation is beyond question,” he said. “We wanted to make sure we aren’t subject to allegations of favor so we farmed it out to a county far away for interpretation.”

County officials said they regretted the length of time the investigation took to complete.

“This took too long when dealing with such a serious accusation,” Johnson said. “It is disgusting to me that the person making the accusation has done so as a long line of innuendo.”

Johnson said he regrets not taking the time to go through the papers on Election Day.

“We should have taken care of it on the day of the election,” he said. “But the investigator had the paper trail to confirm this individual didn’t vote twice.”

Graves said she agreed the process should have been handled on Election Day.

“Actually this whole thing should have been averted and dealt with at the time,” she said. “It shouldn’t have happened. It’s about the integrity of the election.”

Dupree said he was relieved the process was complete.

“I was cleared,” he said. “I did nothing wrong, but it has been a long few weeks going through the process.”

Sun reporter Keith Norman can be reached at (701) 952-8452 or by e-mail at knorman@jamestownsun.com

Tags: north dakota, news, dupree, vote, crime, election