A Pasco landlord is headed to three months in jail for filling out the ballots of former tenants to vote in the 2024 presidential election.
Esperanza “Hope” Contreras, 53, cast the ballots that arrived in the mail and turned them in to the Franklin County Auditor’s Office. Her former tenants didn’t discover it until they tried to vote.
It left the victims confused, scared and hurt, they said in statements during Contreras’ sentencing last week. A disabled woman who had moved to Hermiston learned what happened when police showed up at her door.
“I was so scared. The first thing that came to mind was, ‘I’m going to jail,’” she said. “I really thought that I was going to jail. I’ve never been there and who was going to believe me.”
Contreras previously pleaded guilty to four counts of voter violation, a felony. She owns an Opal Street building where the victims were renters.
The charges carried up to a year in jail. Prosecutors and defense attorneys recommended a sentence of three months of work release from the Benton County jail. The Franklin County jail does not have a work release program.
Judge Jackie Stam agreed with the recommendation and gave her until Oct. 8 to report to jail.
Franklin County sheriff’s detectives began investigating when a Hermiston, Oregon, woman reported that she had tried to vote in the 2024 election and discovered her ballot already had been cast, court documents said.
Her sister, who lived in Lewis County also discovered that her ballot also was returned to county election officials.
They soon learned their former landlord, Contreras, had voted for them.
Detectives also discovered two other former tenants who had their votes cast for them. Investigators compared the signatures on the ballots to the victims and found they were not the same, court documents said.
It’s not clear how they made it through the Franklin County Auditor’s Office’s signature checking system.
