A Santa Fe real-estate agent is serving probation after she admitted to voter fraud in the city's special election over a proposed tax on sales of expensive homes.

Teresa Monahan, also known as Tess, was charged and pleaded guilty in June to attempting to cast a ballot in the name of her dead brother.

Monahan, 64, cast her own early ballot in the election. Then on Feb. 12, according to county records, she requested an absentee-by-mail ballot for Thomas E. Monahan, who had died the prior December.

When election officials tried to verify his voter record, they first thought there was a problem in the voter rolls, explained Denise Lamb, director of the Santa Fe County Elections Bureau. Upon further investigation, including a call to a funeral home and the state agency that issues death certificates, Lamb said, she realized the application couldn't be valid.

Lamb then called Monahan, who she says owned up to the forgery right away and asked Lamb to destroy the application. Lamb wrote in a report about the incident that when she said she would report the action to authorities, Monahan hired attorney Dan Marlowe, who then contacted the Clerk's Office to inquire about the case.

Marlowe said Wednesday that Monahan, whose career includes decades as an investigator for state agencies including the Attorney General's Office, did not want to comment.

"This is totally out of character for her," he said, adding later, "She was under unbelievable stress and strain. She was actually taking care of her brother in the last years of his life, and it was just sending her off the deep end."

Marlowe said he worked with the District Attorney's Office to arrange Monahan's guilty plea, filed in court the same day as the original criminal complaint.

Although the sentence for the crime of false voting can be up to 18 months of imprisonment and/or a fine of $5,000, Monahan was sentenced June 9 to up to 18 months' probation.

A felony record typically strips an individual's ability to vote until a sentence or probation is complete, but Marlowe said Monahan will not lose her right to vote because District Judge Michael Vigil this month issued a "conditional discharge" in the case. That means that if she complies with the terms of her probation for a year, no felony charge will appear on her record after June of 2010, he said.

Neither Lamb nor City Attorney Frank Katz knew about the court proceedings until this week.

Lamb said the outcome proves that the system for maintaining the integrity of voter records is working. Each morning, clerk's workers clip obituaries from local newspapers and attach them to voter files. As a backstop, they also get a monthly summary of deaths in the county, she said.

"In all the years I have been doing this, I have never caught somebody trying to vote for a deceased person. It's a terrible joke people make, but it doesn't really happen," she said. "In this case, we caught the attempt on the day it happened."

The special election in which Monahan attempted the forgery involved an issue that was hotly debated across the city.

Voters narrowly defeated a measure that would have added a 1 percent fee on the portion of any home sale exceeding $750,000 and put the proceeds into a trust fund to support affordable housing programs. Early voting began in February for the March 10 election, in which 54 percent of voters opposed the tax.

The Santa Fe Association of Realtors, of which Monahan is a member, was among voices of opposition to the measure. With major support from the National Association of Realtors, a campaign group spent more than $144,000 on publicity to fight it. However, some individual real-estate professionals supported the tax proposal.

Reached late Wednesday, officials at the Santa Fe association said they had never heard of the vote-fraud incident. "We certainly would not have encouraged anyone to do anything untoward," executive director Donna Reynolds said.

According to records at the association, Monahan formerly worked for Coldwell Banker/Trades West Realty, LTD, but moved to Prudential Santa Fe in April. A Prudential spokesman declined to comment.

Biographical information posted on Prudential's Web site says Monahan spent her last 15 years in law enforcement as the special agent assigned to environmental crime and that her investigations resulted in the first successful environmental criminal prosecution in New Mexico.

The posting also notes that she has worked as a banker, college teacher, and vendor of Native American arts and crafts, and is a member of the Women's Council of Realtors. She also was appointed by Mayor David Coss to the city's Archaeological Review Committee.

Although the special election on the real-estate transfer tax was only for city voters, the county Elections Bureau maintains the official voting database.

Contact Julie Ann Grimm at 986-3017 or jgrimm@sfnewmexican.com.