Former Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden conducted a long and controversial investigation into potential voter fraud. But after three years, 880 hours of detective work and $88,000 he presented only one case for charging.
It was against the top election official in the county, Fred Sherman.
On Nov. 1, 2022 — just one week before voters would choose a governor, attorney general and chair of the Johnson County Commission — the case against Sherman was sent to the district attorney for charging, according to investigative documents obtained by KCUR through the Kansas Open Records Act.
The sheriff's office wanted to charge Sherman with one count of intimidation of voters and one count of obstruction of voting privilege. District Attorney Steve Howe refused to charge.
“It is what it is,” Sherman said in a brief interview. He called all of this “water under the bridge” and did not want to comment further.
The investigation into Sherman began on Aug. 24, 2022, when a sheriff’s office detective interviewed a woman who claimed Sherman made “snide comments” during her election worker training, according to the report written by sheriff's Det. Kevin Cronister.
The woman, whose name was redacted, said she wanted to be a poll worker but during her training was told by Sherman that election day workers had to vote by mail or in advance. It was office policy that election workers could not leave their assigned polling place on election day. She told the investigator that she only believed in voting in person on Election Day.
“She ‘couldn’t stomach the thought of being coerced into consenting to a violation of my civil rights’ by being forced to advance vote or vote by mail,” Cronister wrote.
About a month later, Sherman was interrogated for about two hours about the “criminal allegations being leveled at him,” the report said.
Sherman was represented by a county lawyer although in his report the detective referred to the lawyer as “defense counsel.”
Sherman said he recalled the woman leveling the charges as, “very harsh and argumentative.” The main reason they don’t allow workers to come and go is to preserve the chain of custody of the results, he explained to Cronister.
A summary of his research shows the detective researched laws that ban voter intimidation and allow employees two hours on election day to leave work and vote.
Johnson County Commission Chair Mike Kelly said county elections are, and always have been, secure. "Baseless claims of election fraud have stoked unnecessary conspiracy theories and mistrust in the process, and have impacted the community trust in all levels of government service," he said in a statement to KCUR.
Sherman has been Johnson County election commissioner since 2021 when he was appointed by Republican Secretary of State Scott Schwab. Most elections in Kansas are administered by elected county clerks. In Johnson, Wyandotte, Shawnee and Sedgwick counties, the secretary of state appoints a commissioner.
“I always felt he was dedicated to his job,” new Johnson County Sheriff Byron Roberson told KCUR. When he took office and looked at the file, “I was surprised it was Fred,” who Hayden wanted to charge.
Roberson ran on a promise to release a summary of Hayden’s investigation which he did last week. That one-page summary included the fact that only one case was forwarded for prosecution. But until the entire 200-page file was released, no one knew that case involved the county’s election commissioner.
District Attorney Howe issued a brief statement after the summary was released. “We declined to file charges and noted that there was no evidence of a crime,” the statement said.
Hayden lost the Republican primary against Doug Bedford, who was also highly critical of the election fraud investigation. Since Roberson released his summary Hayden has not returned calls seeking comment.
