Cascade County Elections Officer refutes claims from school district

Cascade County Elections Officer Sandra Merchant refuted claims of poor communication and other alleged shortcomings by her office made by Great Falls Public Schools District in a letter sent to County Commissioners requesting they take over election administration.

Merchant told the Daily Montanan in an email Wednesday that having elections managed by the commission would not be necessary or positive.

“With at least one of the three Commissioners being on the ballot every two years, it would multiply the problem instead of solving it,” she said in the email. “They would choose and appoint that person, and that person would answer to them as an employee of the County even when they are on the ballot. That seems like a huge conflict.”

Merchant disputed claims of a lack of communication between her office and the school district, saying she and her office sent emails, made phone calls and attended in-person meetings. She also said the cost of the election was on par with past elections, and some irregularities from Election Day were the district’s fault.

The Great Falls Public School district sent a letter earlier this month to county commissioners asking they take over election administration duties given issues with how the district’s trustee election was run in May. But the letter elicited some criticism from Merchant and a school trustee.

During discussion around the letter at a school board meeting Monday, board member Paige Turoski said she would have preferred the decision to send the letter be put up for a vote by the board. And Merchant said the county taking over elections would pose a conflict — and pointed at the district for poor communication.

The school board trustee election took place on Merchant’s first election day as Clerk and Recorder. Merchant narrowly defeated 16-year incumbent Rina Moore last year and is a known election denier.

The letter sent by the school district to county commissioners said the rejection of the proposal for an all mail-in ballot, which is how the district has conducted elections for years, impacted the school district’s finances since it bears the cost of the election. The district said it was more than $17,000 in additional expenses, which included legal counsel for election certification.

But Merchant said in her email it was the district’s choice to hire legal counsel, and it was not forced to do so. Otherwise, she said the expenses were “right in the range of average cost of the last several all-mail ballot elections they had — a little more than some, less than others.”

As far as the complaint that ballots were not ready at the polling location on election day, Merchant said that was due to an error from the district, which was required to deliver the list of registered electors before the polling place opened.

“If they weren’t familiar with the law and didn’t know why they were getting the registers, they could have asked. I would have shown them the MCA,” she said, the statute in Montana Code Annotated. “Looks like poor communication on their part.”

Merchant also responded to voters not getting ballots, saying the system generated the list of voters who get ballots for each district, and ballots were sent to all on those lists.

“We received a large number of ballots back in the mail as undeliverable by the Post Office, and many that went to the wrong return address,” she said.

Commissioners said in their response to the district they would be evaluating whether to proceed with the request to absorb election’s administration duties and would review it with Merchant.

Merchant said she looks forward to speaking with them as there has been little communication between her and commissioners on this topic “other than what I have initiated.”

She noted that another department, Budgeting, had been absorbed by the county commissioners, and she alleged the letter was an attempt to shift more duties out of her office to the commissioners.

According to reporting from The Electric, commissioners created the position of Chief Financial Officer and a Finance Department earlier this year following the retirement of the Budgeting Officer, who previously reported to the Clerk and Recorder.

Merchant said this department was created without a vote or public notice.

However, The Electric reported the commission did vote unanimously in January to move accounting from the clerk and recorder’s office to the new finance department.

The municipal election on Nov. 7 is the next election taking place in Great Falls.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Cascade County Elections Officer refutes claims from school district