Cascade County's vote to strip elections from clerk and recorder reflects deeper divide

Following a meeting so highly attended that it had to be moved to the Exhibition Hall and so contentious that it was overseen by four uniformed Sheriff’s deputies, a split vote by the Cascade County commissioners approved an ordinance to strip embattled Clerk and Recorder Sandra Merchant of her duties as election administrator.

The final vote was 2 -1, with commissioners Joe Briggs and Jim Larson voting to approve Resolution 23-62 and commissioner Rae Grulkowski voting against. All three Cascade County commissioners are Republicans, as is Merchant.

The resolution becomes effective immediately and leaves the county having to solicit, hire and install a qualified elections administrator prior to the federal election next November. That election will include a full roster of candidates, and with Montana Democrat Jon Tester seeking a fourth term in the U.S. Senate, the election has the potential to tip the balance of power in Congress.

That reality was cited by Briggs as a motivating factor in his decision to bring Resolution 23-62 to the full commission for a vote.

“In my opinion we have very complex and important elections coming up in this next year,” he said. “It will take time to get things stabilized and restructuring needs to happen within that office. It is my hope that we can get this step taken today and spend the first few months of next year getting whatever necessary changes have to be made to prepare us for the federal elections.”

“I do not take this lightly,” Briggs added just prior to the final vote. “Quite frankly, I agree with a great deal of what the opposition said. However, we have a problem that I believe has to be fixed, and it has to be fixed in the near term.”

Close to 300 people attended Tuesday’s meeting, with those speaking in opposition to the resolution outnumbering those who spoke in support. Many of the more than 100 speakers accused the commission of undermining the will of Cascade County’s voters.

“Need I remind you that voters elected a clerk and recorder/elections administrator in 2022 as a combined position with the expectation that it would remain that way — at least until the current term of office was over,” said Jenni Dodd, a frequent critic of the commission’s actions. “The resolution makes this change effective immediately, thus negating the will of the people in the 2022 general election. Your actions are pure retaliatory.”

Much of the crowd's criticism centered upon a rule change that would significantly impact the county’s election practice midway through an elections administrator’s duly appointed term of office.

“I believe that what you want is a good outcome for the Elections Office,” said Cascade County State Rep. Lola Sheldon-Galloway. “I believe that with all my heart. We agree upon that, but is this the right process? I believe your resolution is the wrong process.

“What I am asking … let’s get rid of this resolution today and let’s find a better solution,” Sheldon-Galloway added. "We can do it by legislation, we can do it through ordinances, but a one-vote one-day process is bad government.”

The 2022 election for clerk and recorder in Cascade County was one of the closest in recent memory. With nearly 29,000 votes cast, political newcomer Sandra Merchant defeated long-time Clerk and Recorder Rina Fontana-Moore by a margin of just 36 votes.

Controversy has followed Merchant ever since. She has drawn allegations of mismanagement in each election she has administered since taking office. Following local elections last May, two Cascade County irrigation districts filed lawsuits against the county claiming Merchant mishandled the election — sending ballots to residents who were ineligible to vote and failing to send them to those who were.

That same month a District Court Judge approved the Great Falls Public Library’s request to appoint an election monitor to observe the handling of the library’s special mill levy election in 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. A final canvass of the county’s Nov. 7 general election results was delayed for a week past a state mandated deadline due to a failure to give adequate public notice, and after discrepancies were found between the number of machine tabulated votes and the number recorded in the election administrator’s report.

Referring to those events, Briggs said the Board of Commissioners has a responsibility “to ensure that the electoral process in Cascade County assures confidence among all the citizens,” and that elections in Cascade County “are conducted with the utmost professionalism and accuracy.”

“Recently we have gone through a series of lawsuits, technical issues, a number of complaints from citizens about the conduct of the election, and a very challenging canvass that I never did get my concerns fully addressed at,” he said. “For that reason, is why I have a second vote to bring it forward for second discussion.

Commissioner Jim Larson said the decision had already been put off too long, and that the county could not afford to put the difficult vote off any longer.

“With all the issues that are festering in Cascade County … including the Elections Office … I feel it’s time to put a non-partisan person in as an elections administrator and get this elections office back into a situation that we can all be proud of,” he said.

“This government is going to make this decision,” Larson added. “We can’t be dancing around. If we table this, then we go through this whole thing again. As I look through the testimony today it was about as close as it was during the election.

Despite the missteps, Cascade County Attorney Josh Racki told the commission early on in Tuesday’s meeting that Merchant never intentionally violated the law.

“My team and I have reviewed the matter in great detail,” Racki said, “and it is the opinion of the Cascade County Attorney’s Office that we have no reason to believe that Ms. Merchant has knowingly or purposefully violate any Montana law that would require the county to redo or would invalidate an election.”

Speaking at the beginning of the six-hour public comment period, Merchant said most of her office’s problems were due to the lack of support she received from the county commission office upon assuming her position.

“Nobody knew me,” Merchant said of those who voted for her. “They were concerned about the Elections Office, that is why they were voting. They were voting to remove someone they did not trust.”

“This person is new in the office, as well as I,” said Commissioner Rae Grulkowski in support of Merchant. “We would expect that we would be guided into a smooth situation and not reprimanded for doing something wrong, but that hand-up hasn’t come out.”

“He is trying to create an illusion of impropriety to accomplish his agenda,” she added, although Merchant declined to include what Brigg’s "agenda" was. She added allegations of security breaches at the Cascade County Elections Office including keys and security fobs loose on tables and desks, confidential passwords taped onto computers, and seal logs either incomplete or missing entirely.

“This was the first time in over 15-years that the elections canvas was done according to law, with the results in front of them and having the commissioners tally those results instead of just looking at a spreadsheet that was typed up and printed out by the elections administrator,” Merchant said in defense of the delay in the Nov. 7 general election canvass results. “It is obviously a political and probably a personal move, and Mr. Briggs is less than honest to be saying that it is not.”

However, Briggs countered that his concerns about the overlapping responsibilities of elections administrator and clerk and recorder had troubled him since before Merchant ever took office.

“This actually started before the election of 2022,” Briggs said of his efforts to separate the duties of clerk and recorder from those of the elections administrator in Cascade County. “At that point in time I was unable to get a second commissioner to support putting it on a work session. In between the election of 2022 and the swearing in of our current clerk and recorder I attempted it again and once again it met with opposition.”

His concerns about those dual and potentially conflicting responsibilities were reflected in the words of Resolution 23-62 itself.

“Despite multiple repeat requests and an abundance of opportunity to do so, Cascade County’s Election Administrator (Rina Fontana-Moore) refused to voluntarily recuse herself from serving as Cascade County’s Election Administrator while seeking re-election as Cascade County’s Clerk and Recorder,” the resolution states. “By failing to recuse herself from serving as Cascade County’s Election Administrator during her 2022 bid to be re-elected as Clerk and Recorder, the Board of Cascade County Commissioners received multiple complaints, concerns, and criticisms surrounding the perceived lack of transparency and appearance of impropriety of having the Cascade County Clerk and Recorder in charge of all election operations while also appearing as a candidate on the ballot.”

Ken Toole, a spokesperson for the reform-minded Elections Protection Committee, said they encouraged their supports to “say where you’re from, say what your position is and sit down.”

“We fully expected that they would have more people at this meeting because, quite frankly they are relying on the Pachyderm Club for their base of support,” Toole said. “Those folks meet monthly. They have 50 to 100 people attend their monthly meetings. They’ve just got a lot more infrastructure than an ad-hoc committee does.”

Toole said the Election Protection Committee had submitted a petition with 300 signatures in support of Resolution 23-26. He also said that for whatever reason it seemed that supporters of Sandra Merchant had much more available time to attend weekday meetings than her opponents do.

“When public entities hold a meeting in the middle of a workday, I just think it changes who is going to be in the room,” Toole said.

He also described the current debate over local policy within the Cascade County Republican Central Committee as a “blood feud,” pitting traditional big-tent Republicans like state Sen. Majority Leader Steve Fitzpatrick and Sen. Wendy McKamey against ultra-conservatives like J.C. Kantorowicz and Randy Pinocci.

“That has gone on for many years,” Toole said. “Obviously the Democrats have similar issues, but it’s not as irritated and agitated, except the backdrop here is Sandra Merchant.”

“The issue is not what Sandra Merchant has done wrong, it’s what she’s done right?” Toole added. “Every single election has had significant issues. It’s one thing when it’s a school board election or a flood district and even the municipal elections, but your next election — if there is any question there are going to be lawyers all over it.

“If the kind of things that we’ve seen since last year when she (Merchant) took office happen in the primary or general election coming, its not going to be, ‘Oh, well I guess we’ll accept the canvas even though there’s a problem.’ It’s going to be federal court. I think both Jim and Joe know that the stakes are going to be fairly high in the next two elections.”

The 2024 general elections are now less than a year away and getting a new elections administrator recruited, vetted, hired and a new Elections Office composed and ready for the challenge only adds to the stress now imposed on Cascade County officials.

“Am I a little concerned about getting a full-time replacement?” Briggs asked. “Yes … but the problem exists now, and I truly believe that it has to be fixed now. No one thinks that this is an easy deal. I’m truly sorry if you think I’m some sort of an evil overlord with this massive plan, because you give me a great deal more credit than I deserve. That’s not who I am.”

“I would say that we definitely don’t have enough information to make any decision,” said Grulkowski. “That’s part of the culture of this county government that I’ve viewed since I’ve been in here. I don’t think this was the proper format or the proper process.”

“What we’re doing is creating more problems without answers, and that’s been done quite often by this board since I’ve been here,” she added. “I will not be voting for this because there is no logical reason to proceed in this manner with such a huge impact to our community.”

Despite Grulkowski’s admonishments, Briggs and Larson voted as a majority to remove Merchant’s elections authority and responsibilities.

This article originally appeared on Great Falls Tribune: Cascade County votes to strip elections from clerk and recorder