An investigation regarding two incidents related to absentee ballots in the 2020 Primary Election resulted in no action being taken by the Daviess County grand jury.
The investigation, led by the Daviess County Sheriff’s Office, revealed that the two individuals suspected of voter fraud did not intentionally cast additional absentee ballots.
Daviess Commonwealth’s Attorney Bruce Kuegel said in a press release Thursday that testimony regarding the investigation was presented to the Daviess County grand jury. After hearing the evidence, no action was taken.
After the Primary Election, County Clerk Leslie McCarty and Deputy Clerk Richard House said two individuals had attempted to vote both in-person at the Owensboro Sportscenter and through mail-in absentee ballots. One of those individuals was believed to have voted on twice accidentally, while the other was suspected to have purposely voted twice.
Chief Deputy Major Barry Smith said the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office asked DCSO to investigate the two cases of suspected fraudulent voting. A detective spoke to both individuals and submitted a report to the County Clerk’s Office.
“I can’t speak for the grand jury but, obviously, they saw there wasn’t enough evidence or intent to defraud the voting system,” Smith said.
House said neither individual was indicted and that the grand jury found nothing wrong with what the Clerk’s Office did in both situations.
“We’ve never had anything like this happen before,” House said. “The person investigated [for allegedly voting twice on purpose] was talked to by a sheriff’s deputy.”
McCarty said one of the major reasons why one of the suspected individuals was not indicted was because the software system used by the County Clerk’s Office was able to detect the second vote made by the individual before it was counted.
“They can’t be tried to commit voter fraud because [the software] caught it,” she said.
