A bookkeeping error appears to be at the root of questions about election spending by a Sebago candidate for the Maine House District 99 seat in November 2007

Democrat Kate Smith, who lost to Republican Ralph Sarty Jr. in a special election to replace Philip Cressey, became the subject of an audit by the Maine Ethics Commission after she wrote a check to commission that was returned for insufficient funds.

“It was a simple mistake,” said Smith. She said she accidentally double-counted some of the money she had raised in her records, projecting her total funds to be $501 more than they were.

“We have not found any evidence at all that the funds were misused,” said Jonathan Wayne, executive director of the Maine Ethics Commission. He said the results of the audit will be presented to the Maine Ethics Commission at its meeting on March 31, but everything so far looks like Smith made an accidental error.

The Maine Ethics Commission consists of Wayne, two Republicans and two Democrats.

Wayne said the mistake was first noticed in January when Smith attempted to return leftover clean election funds. He said Smith wrote a check for more than $1,500 when the account held approximately $1,000.

Wayne said the Maine Ethics Commission recommended the audit after its Jan. 25 meeting. Wayne characterized the audit as routine and said there were 70 such audits in the 2006 Maine campaign season.

The Maine Clean Election Act enables some political hopefuls to receive money for their campaign. Before receiving that money, candidates may collect some private contributions, known as seed money. Smith said she counted her seed money twice and wrote a check for the wrong amount when she tried to give her unused money back to the state.

“She’s been cooperating with the requests for information that we sent her,” said Wayne.

“They have been very professional, it has not been accusatory or anything,” said Smith.

Wayne said Smith has already written a second, smaller check to return her unused money.

Maine House District 99 includes Sebago, Limington, Cornish, Baldwin and Denmark. The special election came after Cressey resigned in September 2007. He had moved to Massachusetts in the spring decided he was unable to effectively serve the district after attending 14 percent of the Legislative session that ended in June 2007.