Briggs proposes removing election duties from county clerk’s office
Commissioner Joe Briggs said during the Dec. 6 work session that he is proposing a resolution to remove election duties from the Cascade County Clerk and Recorder’s office.
His resolution will be considered during the Dec. 12 commission meeting and would place election duties under a new staff election administrator within the commission office. It would be a position similar to other county departments that report to the commission to include public works, planning and Montana Expo Park, among others.
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He had suggested the move last year, before the November 2022 election when Sandra Merchant defeated long-time clerk Rina Moore by 31 votes.
Briggs said that last year, a number of people came to commissioners with concerns about elections and a common theme was that an elected official shouldn’t oversee the election process.
In his resolution, Briggs wrote that under state law, the county clerk and recorder serves as the election administrator unless the governing body of the county designates another official or appoints an election administrator.
He wrote that “despite multiple repeat requests and an abundance of opportunity to do so,” former clerk and recorder Moore, “refused to voluntarily recuse herself from serving” as the election administrator, and by failing to recuse herself, 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.”
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He said that if the county was going to make the change, they should do so now to be prepared for next year’s elections, which include a presidential election.
That will be a “high scrutiny and high stakes election,” he said. “If I didn’t think it was necessary, I wouldn’t have brought it forward.”
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Briggs said that he suggested the change last year, but didn’t get a second from another commissioner to move it forward.
During the Dec. 6 work session, Commissioner Jim Larson said it should go on the regular agenda for next week.
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Commissioner Rae Grulkowski said that she didn’t think it should go on the agenda since it’s “way larger than one elected official wanting to take duties into our office, including our ability to manage people and conduct our office properly.”
She said it “a public matter” that should be done with public hearings.
A resolution is a public matter before the commission, and requires public comment before a vote.
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Grulkowski said that there is “nothing to substantiate moving these duties” other than a “false narrative” and “there are no facts presented that she’s negligent in what she’s doing.”
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Briggs responded that she was the only one talking about deficiencies in regard to moving election duties and that his reasoning was that a singular elected official shouldn’t oversee elections, to include their own.
Briggs wrote in the resolution that by appointing an election administrator to serve at the commission’s direction, they’ll eliminate the appearance of impropriety as any single commissioner whose seat appears on the ballot in a given calendar years shall be required to abstain from all decisions concerning the operation and management of the election office during that calendar year until such time as the election for said office is finalized.”
The county recently purchased two Election Systems and Software election ballot tabulator machines for about $200,000, which are kept in the elections office and under the control and oversight of the election administrator.
“Cascade County has received persistent criticism and concerns from certain members of the public who are openly politically aligned to the currently elected clerk and recorder that the county’s ES&S tabulators are Wi-Fi connected, capable of being manipulated by foreign governments or other nefarious actors, and that the only way to remove such fears is for Cascade County to open the tabulators for public inspection, Briggs wrote.
Appointing an election administrator under the commission, will ensure the county “is able to responsibly secure, and properly maintain and operate the ES&S tabulators at all times, in full compliance with their warranties, and assuage fears from certain members of the public that the tabulators will be tampered with, which would immediately void the tabulators’ essential warranties and functionality and render $200,000 worth of county assets worthless,” Briggs wrote in his resolution.
He continued that the county elections under the current clerk and recorder has been sued multiple times “for irregularities and technical errors in the elections she has thus far conducted; and several of these lawsuits remain unresolved in the Montana court system, are being litigated at taxpayer expense, and may ultimately require Cascade County to bear the cost of rerunning one or more elections.”
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He said that he initially proposed the move in the form of an ordinance, which requires multiple public meetings, but the county attorney’s office reviewed the proposal and changed it to a resolution.
Carey Ann Haight, chief deputy attorney for the civil division, said that when the commission removed accounting duties from the clerk and recorder’s office, they did so by resolution and that this was a similar move. Commissioners split accounting from the clerk’s office in January and Grulkowski supported the change in a unanimous vote.
