Allegations of old-style political fraud, including graveyard voting and ballot nabbing, have overtaken the runoff for the District 1 seat on the Dallas City Council.

The race pits Delia Jasso, the top vote-getter on May 9, against Justin Epker to represent much of Oak Cliff.

The allegations have been stoked by confirmation that at least one ballot in the May election was cast in the name of a deceased woman.

Juana Rodriguez's son-in-law, Paul Padilla, said the 65-year-old woman died on Feb. 15. But the Dallas County Elections Office received a mail-in ballot in her name on May 6, according to elections officials.

No one knows what candidate received the vote, and Rodriguez's son-in-law said he has no idea how it came to be cast.

"She didn't ever really vote," he said.

County elections administrator Bruce Sherbet said he is concerned by the vote and has forwarded information about it to the Dallas County district attorney, standard procedure when there is any allegation of wrongdoing.

"There's just no question if everything pans out to be exactly as we're told, there is definitely something amiss," said Sherbet, who deals with dozens of vote-fraud accusations each election cycle.

It may never be known who benefited from Rodriguez's tainted vote. Elections officers immediately separate mail-in ballots from the envelopes they are sent in to protect the secret vote.

But the near certainty that a dead woman's ballot was cast in the race has changed the tone of the runoff.

Epker, who said he learned of the Rodriguez vote when volunteers for his campaign visited her home to seek her support, blamed Jasso's campaign for the incident.

"It tells me that I'm winning, that they know it and they'll go to any means possible to usurp our democratic process," he said.

In recent days, he sent a mailer warning residents that the district has never seen "anything like the fraud going on in this year's City Council election."

There's no evidence that the Jasso campaign or people working with it were involved with the vote. Jasso said Friday that any allegation her campaign acted improperly is false.

"I'm spending my time talking to voters, while they're spending their time making false accusations," she said.

To receive a mail-in ballot, a voter must formally request one from the county.

In the Rodriguez case, the elections office received a ballot request on April 31 and mailed the ballot to her Oak Cliff home on either May 1 or 2, an elections official said.

The ballot was returned on May 6 and counted on May 9.

Historically, allegations of dead-voter and mail-in fraud have swirled around Dallas elections. But prosecutions have been rare, and verified instances of fraud are uncommon.

Last year, The Dallas Morning News reviewed more than 40 ballots that appeared to have been cast in the name of dead voters but found that clerical errors, not fraud, accounted for the irregularities.

But the appearance that at least one vote was cast fraudulently has raised concerns about a series of other events surrounding mail-in ballots in District 1.

Marjorie Garrick filed an affidavit on Wednesday swearing that she was approached at her Gibsondell Avenue home by a young man before the May 9 election.

The man identified himself as an elections official and asked Garrick to accept a mail-in ballot and to sign some kind of form. The man returned a week later to collect the ballot, and Garrick turned it over, blank, saying she intended to vote at the polls, the affidavit stated.

When she went to vote on Election Day, Garrick was told a ballot had already been cast in her name.

Mary Hollies, an election judge who lives on Mount Ranier Street, said she was approached at her home in the last two weeks by a young woman wearing a Jasso T-shirt.

The woman, who did not give Hollies her name, said that she had a ballot for Hollies to sign and that Hollies could vote right there at her house.

"I said I vote at the polls and not at my door," Hollies said.

In another case, Alejadrina Rivera of 12th Street said she was approached by a young man who asked her to sign some kind of form.

"He said, 'Please, please sign this paper.' He said, 'I can't do my job because Delia is going to be all over me,' " Rivera said.

The county had not received a mail-in ballot from Rivera as of Friday.

Jasso said no one from her campaign has approached people to sign forms or hand over ballots.

"Whoever was described as this person with a Jasso T-shirt doing this stuff is not someone on my campaign," she said.

She added that similar stories about Epker volunteers are circulating in the district but did not offer specifics.

Rivera and Hollies both said they did not know the identity of the people who came to their doors nor did they have any independent knowledge that those people were connected to Jasso's campaign.

Hollies declined to say whom she is supporting in the election. Rivera said she voted for Mark Gonzales, who did not reach the runoff.

Sherbet, the elections administrator, said he has forwarded those complaints and several others to the district attorney's office.

That isn't an indication that fraud was involved, only that it must be investigated, he said.

"We treat all complaints the same according to a process," he said.