Bonner County deputy clerk challenging allegations

SANDPOINT - A Bonner County deputy clerk accused of election fraud intends to fight the allegations against him.

Counsel for Charles Konrad Wurm filed a not guilty plea on his behalf, court records show. Sandpoint attorney Fred Palmer's notice of appearance in the case unsealed it, revealing that Wurm is charged with official neglect or malfeasance.

A preliminary hearing to determine if there's enough evidence to justify a trial in 1st District Court is Wednesday.

The charge against Wurm stems from his handling of petitions in last year's attempted recall of Steve Youngdahl, chairman of the Lake Pend Oreille School District's board of trustees.

The criminal complaint against Wurm alleges that he either willfully neglected or refused to perform his duties by accepting improperly verified signature sheets for the recall petition.

Bonner County Clerk Ann Dutson-Sater also faces charges in connection with the Youngdahl recall. She is accused of subornation of perjury for allowing recall organizer Tom Bokowy to attest in writing that he witnessed all of the recall petition signatures being gathered when he hadn't.

Dutson-Sater faces two additional counts of official neglect or malfeasance for accepting the improperly-certified signature sheets and allowing recall organizers to submit signature sheets in stages rather than all at once as required by state law.

A preliminary hearing in Dutson-Sater's case is also set for Wednesday.

Dutson-Sater has indicated she made mistakes in handling the recall and was not trying to violate the law. Her defense counsel has entered a not-guilty plea on her behalf.

Court documents in Wurm's case indicates he accepted the petitions without realizing each sheet needed a notarized verification on it. The verifications were attached to the petitions so a copier was used to re-size the petitions to make room for the verifications.

In interviews with a Kootenai County sheriff's detective who investigated the case, both Dutson-Sater and Wurm said they had no ties to any of the parties involved in the recall.

School district patrons sought Youngdahl's recall because of his proposal to arm district personnel to protect students and staff in the event of a school shooting. The clerk's office called off the recall after discovering that the initiative's backers submitted petitions at two separate times instead of all at once.

Part of the sheriff's investigation delved into allegations that recall backers had made material misrepresentations about Youngdahl's security proposal to garner signatures, but no evidence to support those claims surfaced, court documents indicate.