MONROE COUNTY, MI (WTOL) - Sheriff Dale Malone of Monroe County may have violated election law when he made his announcement to run a consecutive time.
According to the Michigan Bureau of Elections, public officeholders and other public bodies are prohibited from using their office email and phones for campaign purposes.
Malone sent an email from his county email address announcing his plan to run which looked like a regular press release and included the department's contact information in the heading.
In addition to this, there was a link to Malone's re-election announcement on the Monroe County Sheriff's website which is paid for by taxpayer money since it is run through the county. This was confirmed by Monroe County commissioner Mark Ellsworth.
"It's not uncommon, especially in a big election year, to receive, you know, many dozens of campaign finance complaints," said spokesman Fred Woodhams. "Publications, emails, the use of a public room that other candidates or groups don't have access to, those would all be the sorts of things that would be prohibited under state law."
Woodhams says the Secretary of State office gets involved when a person files a finance complaint and that the issues are usually resolved when the violator says they will not make that decision again. Sometime the violator is fined.
The Michigan Secretary of State's office could not comment directly on Malone's case, but did say that public officials are not permitted to use public resources to campaign.
Al Potratz, Monroe county commissioner said he's always known Sheriff Malone to be an honest person and can't imagine he'd violate election laws knowingly.
Malone was unavailable for comment on Friday.
