Ballots for the Great Falls Public Schools board election have been mailed, a bit later than initially planned, but within the legal deadline.

Ballots have typically been printed by the county print shop.

The former print shop manager resigned from the county on April 9 and told The Electric he hadn’t received ballot proofs by that time to be able to start printing.

Due to the staffing change, the county election office had Election Systems and Software, or ES&S, print the ballots.

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The Omaha based company is the vendor for all Montana counties, including Cascade County, for election equipment and ballot programming.

Terry Thompson, county election administrator, told The Electric that she received the first ballot proof from ES&S on April 8 and sent her corrections. She sent the corrected ballot proof to GFPS on April 9 for final review and ordered ballots from ES&S the same day, after being notified the county print shop employee had resigned.

She said the print shop would have had the ballot file on April 10 to start printing ballots.

In an April 12 email to The Electric, Thompson confirmed the print shop employee had left the county and “that departure is not impacting the ballots being printed. The GFPS ballots are being printed now and the primary ballots are in the final proofing process. The GFPS ballots will be mailed to voters on April 19.”

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On April 15, Thompson emailed Brian Patrick, GFPS’ business operations manager, that since the GFPS election was an all-mail election, under state law, ballots could be mailed no sooner than 20 days before nor later than 15 days before the election.

That window was April 17-22.

Thompson told Patrick in her April 15 email that ballots were scheduled to arrive on April 17 when staff and volunteers would insert ballots into envelopes to be ready for mailing April 19.

If GFPS had conducted a poll election, as some county officials seemed to prefer during public meetings, absentee ballots would have had to be mailed April 17 under timelines set by state law.

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During a January meeting between county and GFPS officials pertaining to the election, Commissioner Rae Grulkowski said that a mail ballot is more labor intensive and a poll election still mails ballots to those who select absentee.

“I question labor and efficiency and our ability to get it done,” Grulkowski said in January.

During that same meeting, Commissioner Joe Briggs said if they have to mail 67 percent of ballots anyway to voters who opt to vote absentee, then the cost to mail the additional ballots is likely not substantially more.

Thompson was appointed as the new election administrator in February.

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Thompson told The Electric on April 23 that ES&S had promised the ballots would arrive on April 17, so she had notified GFPS that ballots would be mailed April 19.

The first shipment of ballots arrived on the morning of April 18 and Thompson said her office began putting them in envelopes at 1 p.m. that day, working into the early morning of April 19. She said the second shipment of ballots arrived April 19.

Thompson said she notified GFPS at 4:30 p.m. April 19 that ballots wouldn’t be mailed that day. State law requires that all ballots be mailed on the same day in a mail ballot election.

Thompson said that staff and volunteers worked around the clock to prepare ballots for mailing and on April 21, discovered that 450 ballots were missing from one precinct, so she had a local printer print those ballots that day.

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They completed inserting ballots and sealing envelopes at 2:30 p.m. April 21 and ballots were delivered to the postal annex at 12:30 p.m. April 22, Thompson told The Electric.

Ballot printing will be an additional cost for the county since ES&S printed the ballots rather than the county print shop.

Commissioner Joe Briggs told The Electric that since the former print shop manager resigned, there are no employees in the print shop, “so this is an ideal time to examine whether or not it is cost effective to have an inhouse print shop or not and if so, what capacities do we need. That process is underway so at this point we do not have answer as to whether or not [the print shop] will be reopened with new staff or be closed permanently.”

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For the May 7 election, Thompson said:

• May 3: early counting will begin at Exhibition Hall
• May 6: last day to request an absentee ballot through noon
• May 7: both the election office and Exhibition Hall will be open for ballot drop off and voter registration from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Ballots can also be dropped off at the elections office 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The dropbox at the Courthouse Annex will be available May 7.

During their April 8 meeting, the GFPS board approved a list of 13 election judges for their election.

During their April 23 meeting, Cascade County Commissioners tabled their vote, at Thompson’s request, on their list of election judges for the May 7 election.

Thompson told commissioners that the political parties were supposed to have submitted lists to her office of election judges, but that hadn’t been done so her office sent lists to the parties for review.

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Thompson said she’ll plan to send reminders to the parties in the future around the start of the year to ensure the election judge lists are ready earlier and invite those individuals to the trainings.

She said the Republican Central Committee signed off on their list, but the Democrats added a few people to their list who hadn’t yet gone through the election judge training so they needed more time to finalize the list for commissioners to vote.

The county list will also be used for the general election, Thompson told commissioners during their April 17 work session.

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The commission has to appoint election judges in even years at least 30 days before an election.

That wasn’t the process used in the past in Cascade County, but Clerk and Recorder Sandra Merchant made commissioners aware of the provision in Montana law last fall.

Thompson said the county held election judge trainings in February and March and over seven classes, 166 people were certified.

Sharon Patton Griffin spoke during public comment saying the confusion over elections is continuing and that a monitor should be appointed to help the staff.

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Mary Embleton, the former county budget officer, said the mismanagement and issues with elections and the appointment of election judges should be blamed on commissioners and the county legal office.

Richard Liebert said that he thought it “smells” that Commissioner Rae Grulkowski, as well as other individuals running for office this year, and Merchant are on the list of elections judges.