Updated at 11 a.m. Jan. 30 with additional election cost information.

Cascade County Commissioners unanimously approved a new fee schedule for elections during a special Jan. 29 meeting.

Commissioners met on Jan. 23 to have a similar discussion, but didn’t have enough information to develop a cost estimate for the school elections or set the fee schedule so they asked Dev Biddick, the interim elections administrator, to gather cost comparisons and draft a resolution for the Jan. 29 meeting.

During the Jan. 23 meeting, the agenda included discussing the Sun River School District election.

Belinda Klick and Superintendent David Marzolf told The Electric they hadn’t been notified of the election.

Klick said she had emailed Sandra Merchant in November and December asking for their list of election judges to include in the resolution she planned to present to their school board in January.

She said she received no response from the county.

In early January, Klick said she followed up and received a response from Biddick stating that she needed a resolution and attaching a draft from other districts.

Klick said she’d copied Commissioner Joe Briggs on the email.

Briggs said he took no action in December since Merchant was still in charge of elections.

On Jan. 5, he told The Electric that he forwarded Klick’s followup email to Biddick, who acknowledged receipt of that email that day.

Briggs said Biddick responded to Klick on another Jan. 18 email that he hadn’t been copied on.

Klick said they have two seats up for election this year.

In some past years, Sun River has been able to cancel their election by acclamation, meaning there aren’t more candidates than available seats, but they still have to meet all state law timelines until then.

County, GFPS discuss May election

Prior to the Jan. 29 meeting, a draft of the fee resolution was posted on the county website that was largely blank other than some of the items for which the entity holding the election is billed the actual cost.

During the meeting, Biddick distributed a different document to commissioners and staff updated the website with the other document during the meeting.

County, GFPS officials discuss May school election

Biddick told commissioners that she went through several previous years of invoices to develop her draft, that Commissioner Rae Grulkowski and Clerk and Recorder Sandra Merchant assisted with.

For the majority of the meeting, commissioners and staff discussed what the fee should be for using the ballot tabulator machines.

Grulkowski said she asked another county how they calculate that fee and after some conversation, said “I’m kinda stumped on that.”

County posts election office positions

By the end of the meeting, commissioners agreed to use the depreciated value of the tabulator, divided by the typical three elections per year, and then a prorated cost to each of the entities having an election in that cycle. That prorated cost would factor the number of ballots involved in that election since, for example, the Great Falls Public Schools election has more ballots than some special districts.

In some years, elections are canceled by acclamation, meaning there are only as many candidates as there are available seats, but in other years, there could be more than three elections depending on special districts or circumstances.

Grulkowski said that from 2008, the date of the last fee resolution, to now, some costs had decreased.

County appoints Biddick as election administrator

Going through Biddick’s document, Commissioner Joe Briggs said that trying to get an estimate for the Great Falls Public Schools district, who attended the meeting, was challenging since there are variables in the actual costs.

Grulkowski said the only way to get an estimate would be for GFPS to go through their old invoices and guess.

Briggs said they could tighten up numbers based on known costs and the estimated number of ballots that needed to be printed and mailed.

He asked how many voters were registered for the GFPS election.

He was told about 30,000.

Briggs said that last week Biddick had said there were 18,000.

County officials continuing discussion on moving election duties

Grulkowski said that she’d asked elections and there were about 29,000 active voters in the GFPS district and of those, about 25,000 were registered absentee.

In 2023, the county elections office printed 38,000 ballots and paid postage to mail 31,000 ballots, according to the bill sent to GFPS.

Biddick said voter registration has been increasing recently.

In 2022, the county elections office told The Electric that 34,508 ballots were mailed.

Grulkowski said it’s “impossible to put anything together for the estimate. It wouldn’t be impossible, because there’s so much actual costs,” it would be difficult she said.

GFPS preparing for next election

The county elections office has provided estimates to the school district for years.

Briggs said they knew postage, mileage, Expo Park rental and election judge compensation per hour, so could use past documents to make educated guesses and get an estimated to GFPS for their May election.

Briggs said they should use the last invoice as a baseline, move forward with the mail ballot election and use the May election to tighten up their numbers for estimates.

Commissioner Jim Larson asked GFPS Superintendent Tom Moore and Business Operations Manager Brian Patrick if they’d considered changing to a poll election.

County increased facility rental rates for Montana Expo Park

Patrick said it’s up to the school board but they already requested a mail ballot election.

The district and Cascade County signed a contract last year for the county to conduct the May 2024 election.

Briggs asked how much their election cost last year, to which Moore said $45,945.69.

Merchant’s estimate for that election was $38,101.07, but the math in her estimate was incorrect and it actually totaled $41,821.09, according to documents from the county and GFPS.

According to recent review of the 2023 GFPS election costs by county audit staff, the cost were at least $61,323.04.

The Electric requested, and received, the cost breakdown by staff, who noted that some needed more clarity.

During public comment, Pete Fontana read a letter from Michael Meloy, an attorney, on behalf of the local Election Protection Committee.

County Commission votes to strip election duties from clerk and recorder’s office

In that letter, Meloy expressed concern with Grulkowski participating actively in decisions and discussion on elections since the resolution commissioners passed in December removing election duties from Merchant and having commissioners appoint an election administrator states, “appointing an election administrator to serve at the direction of the Board of Cascade County Commissioners will 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.”

Meloy wrote that Grulkowski’s participation is a clear violation of that resolution.

Some locals have filed a petition to reverse the December ordinance and restore election duties to the clerk’s office.

To be effective, that petition must be signed by at least 15 percent of the qualified voters with 60 days of the initial resolution passing, it’s suspended until a special election is called on the question, according to state law.

The resolution was approved on Dec. 12.

Jan Wenaas, a local who in 2022 asked commissioners to consider eliminating mail ballots and vote tabulating machines, said she was “appalled at the lack of data that was not brought forth” for the meeting and that it appeared they were starting from scratch.

When asked, GFPS provided The Electric with their annual election costs dating back to 2010. In some years, election costs are lower since GFPS shared election costs with other jurisdictions.

Those numbers from GFPS are:

• 2010: $44,828
• 2011: $33,403
• 2012: $27,816
• 2014: $39,658
• 2015: $48,765
• 2016: $34,808
• 2017: $81,735 (bond and school board elections)
• 2018: $25,691
• 2019: no election since not enough candidates, election canceled by acclamation
• 2020: $57,280
• 2021: $43,468
• 2022: $30,543
• 2023: $45,945