Cascade County Clerk and Recorder Sandra Merchant's supporters, critics rally at elections office

Both supporters and critics of embroiled Cascade County Clerk and Recorder Sandra Merchant rallied in front of the elections office Monday, in response to a demand from the public interest group the “Election Protection Committee” that Merchant’s election duties be stripped from her.

Roughly 40 demonstrators, divided about equally between those expressing support for Merchant and those calling for her ouster. They carried placards ranging from “Commissioners do the right thing — Remove Duties” to “Honesty And Integrity Are Sandra Merchant.”

The rally was peaceful but reaffirmed the deep divide in Cascade County over allegations of Merchant’s incompetence as an elections’ administrator, including ballots sent incorrectly or not at all, confusion over handling of voter registration lists and a breakdown in communications heading into the Great Falls Public Schools Board of Trustees election last May.

“There are multiple lawsuits against Sandra Merchant right now," said Jasmine Taylor, chair of the Election Protection Committee. “Attorneys from MACo (Montana Association of Counties), which is the group that should be representing her are not, so private tax dollars are now paying a high-priced attorney out of Bozeman because she keeps making mistakes.”

Taylor’s reference was to lawsuits filed by the West Great Falls Flood and Drainage Control District and Fort Shaw Irrigation District claiming Merchant sent ballots to residents who were not eligible to vote and failed to send them to eligible ones, and that some ballots didn’t include election instructions or a secrecy envelope.

In May, a district court judge approved the Great Falls Public Library’s request to appoint an election monitor to observe the Elections Office’s handling of the library’s mill levy election last June, and in September Great Falls Public Schools officials sent a letter to Cascade County Commissioners asking that Merchant’s election duties be transferred to the county commissioners.

Taylor asserted that some of Merchant’s actions during her first year in office amount to politically motivated voter suppression.

“There are certain offices that shouldn’t be partisan,” she said. “Things like the clerk and recorder, where there’s election administration duties, it's inherently problematic for that to be a partisan election.”

“It’s imperative that we fix this right now,” she added. “Whether it's incompetence or malfeasance its unacceptable. At this point we need the county commissioners to pony up, do their jobs and fix this issue.”

Representatives of the Election Protection Committee are asking that county commissioners remove Merchant’s election administration duties before the end of the year, however, it’s not entirely clear if commissioners have the constitutional authority to strip Merchant of those duties.

In Cascade County, the Clerk and Recorder’s Office is an elected position. From one perspective, the county commissioners are not Merchant’s superior officers, but rather both positions derive their authority equally from a free and open vote of the people.

“I believe it is questionable,” Merchant said of the county commission's authority to revoke her elections duties. “There are six counties in Montana that have appointed elections administrators. They were all requested by the clerk and recorder to have those responsibilities removed from them. Never in this state have those duties been taken from a clerk and recorder. There is no historical precedence for that.”

“There’s a small group of people who don’t like who was elected,” Merchant added. “They don’t like the results of the election that was held last November. They have a right to voice their opinion, but does that mean that the election should be overthrown by a small group of people?”

Outside the elections office, supporters of Merchant echoed her assessment of the Election Protection Committee’s demands.

“We are a government of people,” said Montana state Rep. Lola Sheldon-Galloway. “The more we get a voice in that by our personal individual votes — not three commissioners taking a vote — we feel there’s more power in the people choosing the way that we’re going.”

“Voting is our voice,” Merchant supporter Nancy Donovan said. “We want to maintain the right to voice our wants and our desires for our community, period.”

“I’m not sure what they hope to accomplish be doing this,” Donovan added, “except it will affect us in the future. We won’t be able to vote for this position anymore. It’s important that the citizens maintain control of their government in every way possible. It benefits all of us to have a finger on the pulse of our government. The more control we give them (government in general) the less we have.”

Former Cascade County Commissioner Jane Weber, who currently serves as the Election Protection Committee’s media contact, said she is convinced that Cascade County Commissioners do have the authority to remove Merchant’s election duties.

“If two commissioners in this office choose to remove her duties they can write an ordinance, have public meetings and then make a decision,” Weber said. “Then she would simply go across the street and work in the land section of the Clerk and Recorders Office. She has no authority over that.”

In the six Montana counties which appoint an elections administrator, the Clerk and Recorder's Office duties are limited to recording and filing property documents, keeping record of commissioner's minutes, and filing and resolving issues with birth and death certificates.

As to the allegations of professional incompetence, Sheldon-Galloway said there is no evidence that Merchant has done anything illegal or unethical.

“We would just ask people to ask for evidence when they are told somebody is not doing their job,” Sheldon-Galloway said. “Let’s have some evidence and whatever that looks like we’ll deal with it, but I haven’t seen it.”

“The Cascade County people need to go to the Montana code and look and see how things were done and how things are being done and they’ll see that it lines up with the Montana code, which is where her and our county commissioners instructions come from. We’re not finding any evidence in any way that it has been violated.”

The Elections Protection Committee is also asking that Cascade County voters become more involved in the elections administration process. Weber encourages any voter who receives a ballot they believe has an error on it to forward their concerns to electionprotection406@gmail.com.

"Electionprotection406’s mission is to record and find out what errors have been made, and where has voter suppression occurred," Weber said. "We only know that when the voters let us know. Folks should take a photograph of the error on their ballot and forward it to us at electionprotection406@gmail.com “If they have a concern we need to know,” Weber said. “We don’t want those errors swept under the carpet, which is done when they’re only reported back the Elections Office.”

This article originally appeared on Great Falls Tribune: Group calls for ousting of Cascade County clerk and recorder