School board election results

Posted on May 3, 2022 by Jenn Rowell

Updated at 12 p.m. May 4

Preliminary results for the May 3 school board election are below.

According to unofficial results, Nathan Reiff, who was appointed to fill the vacancy after the death of former board chair Jan Cahill has been upset by newcomer Paige Turoski.

Unofficial results show incumbents Gordon Johnson and Mark Finnicum holding their seats for another term.

For the one-year term:

Bradley Anderson: 956
Russell Herring: 3,089
Scott Jablonski: 3,480
Caitlyn Nash (dropped out): 1,011
Amie Thompson: 4,035

For the three-year term:

Brian Cayko: 5,614
Mark Finnicum (incumbent): 6,276
Gordon Johnson (incumbent): 6,737
Rodney Meyers: 3,904
Michael Nagel: 2,623
Nathan Reiff (appointed in 2021 to fill vacancy): 5,057
Paige Turoski: 5,795

According to the elections office, 34,508 ballots were mailed.

As of 10 p.m., 13,164 ballots had been processed.

On May 4, the county elections office was contacting people who didn’t sign their ballots or had mismatched signatures. They have until 5 p.m. Wednesday to come in and correct the issue. Lynn DeRoche, county elections supervisor, said only seven people had come in to fix their signatures as of about noon Wednesday.

The results are not considered final until the county has conducted a canvass, which will be sometime next week, and the Great Falls Public Schools board certifies the results, according to the elections office.

For comparison, in the November 2021 municipal election about 29,000 ballots were issued, according to the county elections office and of those, 13,976 were returned.

Elections officials said one member of the public came to observe the election for about two hours in the morning on May 3 and there were no complaint of any voter or election fraud.

More candidates file for May school board election

Jeff Gray, the current board chair, did not seek re-election.

Four school board seats on May ballot, filing opens Dec. 9.

Caitlyn Nash emailed The Electric on April 6 to say that after the Great Falls Education Association released its candidate endorsements that afternoon that she had decided to suspend her campaign and support Russell Herring.

The deadline for candidates to withdraw to be removed from the ballot was March 31, so Nash’s name remained on the ballot, according to the county elections office.

Ballots for school board election in the mail

School board candidates take questions; ballots mailed April 18

The ballot also included Great Falls Transit District candidates, which has two spots open. The County Commission will certify those results.

Those results so far are: