County meeting on proposal to remove election duties from clerk and recorder’s office moved to Expo Park
In anticipation of a crowd, Cascade County has moved next week’s normal commission meeting to Exhibition Hall in Montana Expo Park.
The meeting begins at 9:30 a.m. Dec. 12.
Among other items, to include proposed rental rate increase for Expo Park, is a resolution removing election duties from the clerk and recorder’s office.
Commissioner Joe Briggs asked to add the item to the regular meeting agenda during their Dec. 6 work session, which is essentially an agenda setting meeting. Several other items were added to the agenda during the work session, which happens often during their work sessions throughout the year.
Briggs proposes removing election duties from county clerk’s office
His resolution 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.
He had suggested the move last year, before the November 2022 election when Sandra Merchant defeated long-time clerk Rina Moore by 36 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.
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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.
By Dec. 7, the following notice was posted on the election page of the county website, in bold, red type. The Electric did not correct any of it for style, capitalization or punctuation.
“To all registered voters in Cascade County- your right to vote is in jeopardy! Two of the County Commissioners have stated their intention to nullify the 14,000+ votes that were cast November 8, 2022, for the current Clerk & Recorder/Elections Administrator. They have on the agenda for the Commission meeting on December 12, 2023, a resolution to remove the Elections Administrator duties from the Clerk & Recorder position, overthrowing the election that took place and appointing a person of their choosing-not chosen by the people-to run the elections in the future. See the DOCUMENTS link below for the resolution and contact the Commissioners to let them know if you want your vote to count!”
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Asked about the properness of the posting, County Attorney Josh Racki told The Electric, “I have reviewed the posting. It does not appear to violate any laws on using government resources to campaign or lobby.”
The Electric asked Merchant if she’d like to share her thoughts on the proposed resolution. As of 5:30 p.m. Dec. 8, she had not responded.
Briggs wrote in his resolution 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.”
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.
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That will be a “high scrutiny and high stakes election,” he said during the work session. “If I didn’t think it was necessary, I wouldn’t have brought it forward.”
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.
Commissioners did not take a formal vote on the resolution during the Dec. 6 work session, but need a consensus among commissioners to place the item on the agenda.
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Commissioner Rae Grulkowski said during the work session 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.
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.”
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.
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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.”
Grulkowski’s seat will be on the ballot in 2024 as she was elected to fill the remainder of the term vacated by Jane Weber in 2021 that Don Ryan was appointed to fill but lost the election to Grulkowski in November 2022.
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Briggs was re-elected in 2022 to a six year term.
Larson was re-elected in 2020 to a six year term.
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.
Last year, Merchant was associated with a group of people who asked the county to eliminate mail ballots and require all voters to vote in person. They also asked that the county count all ballots by hand and stop using the vote counting machines that have been in use in Cascade County for years.
The group made claims of voter fraud and that the machines could be hacked.
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Last year, Jeff Mangan, then Montana Commissioner of Political Practices, told The Electric that since he was appointed to the position in 2017, there have been seven voter fraud complaints statewide. One was referred back to the local government for adjudication and one is currently in court in Phillips County. The others were unsubstantiated, he said.
Mangan said there hadn’t been a single formal or informal complaint related to voter or election fraud from Cascade County in his time as COPP.
Mangan left office late last year in 2022.
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.
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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.”
Two lawsuits against the county over three different elections this year are still pending.
In August, nearly two month after the library levy election, two county residents filed in District Court asking that the election be ruled invalid.
Both parties have filed notices of issue, meaning they are fully briefed and awaiting a decision from the judge.
In May, a District Court judge assigned an election monitor for the June 6 library election based on concerns of errors during the May 2 election as a result a civil suit the library board brought against the county elections office.
In late May, Steve Potts filed suit on behalf of Elliot Merja, Riley Denning, and Timothy and Laurie Miller.
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The suit is filed against Cascade County, Sandra Merchant, the Fort Shaw Irrigation District and the West Great Falls Flood Control and Drainage District.
In the suit, Merja, Denning and the Millers allege that the county, Merchant and two special districts violated multiple provisions of state law.
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They ask the court to void the two special district elections and order a special election should be held.
That case is also still pending.
Briggs said during the Dec. 6 work session 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.
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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.
