Cascade County blows state deadline for election canvass

Officials in Cascade County have struggled to certify the results of the recent municipal elections in Great Falls and several outlying communities, missing a state-mandated deadline of Nov. 21 to complete the county’s post-election canvass.

The challenges began nearly two weeks ago as Cascade County Clerk and Recorder Sandra Merchant attempted to schedule a canvass meeting on Nov. 20, a Monday, with the county commission. In an interview with Montana Free Press, Cascade County Commissioner Joe Briggs said he was worried that the schedule, proposed by Merchant the Friday prior, violated Montana’s 48-hour notice requirement for public meetings — a concern, he added, that the county attorney’s office later substantiated. 

Merchant and the commission rescheduled the canvass for Nov. 22, but after more than five hours the group still failed to certify the election results. They will now reconvene at 1:30 p.m., on Nov. 29 with the goal of concluding the work. Until that happens, Briggs said, “no one can take office.”

“That wouldn’t normally happen for another month and a half, so assuming we can get this handled this week, there really won’t be any operational issues,” Briggs continued. “The concern is it just adds another question mark to the election process, and we’ve been going through this now — well, every election this year, there’s been a lawsuit. Whether there will be one about this one or not, I don’t know. But it does not add to the credibility of the election process, and that’s bad.”

Briggs said he moved to adjourn last Wednesday’s meeting after he noticed several discrepancies in the post-election reports for the outlying communities of Cascade and Belt. He noted that the canvass was a significant departure from past elections, with commissioners not receiving materials prior to the meeting and not being presented with the information needed to compare the number of ballots processed by vote-tabulating machines with the number of ballots returned by voters to the elections office.

Merchant did not respond to multiple messages requesting comment.

According to spokesperson Richie Melby, the office of Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen has not received any correspondence from Cascade County’s elections department regarding the canvass. Melby said via email that it was “only through media inquiries such as yours” that he became aware Cascade County had not yet fulfilled its post-election duties under state law.

“SOS officials will be reaching out to Cascade County to request an update on their county canvass and their plans to complete the process, if it hasn’t been already, as required by statute,” Melby wrote.

Melby added that, unlike elections involving federal-, state-, or district-level offices, municipal elections do not require counties to certify their results with the board of state canvassers.

The canvass is one of a series of election administration duties laid out in state law to ensure the accuracy and security of local elections. Such processes include a hand-count audit to verify the accuracy of a county’s vote-tabulating machines, and the canvass, which verifies the total number of votes cast for candidates and ballot issues. While state law does require county officials to complete a canvass of their local elections within 14 days after the election, it does not stipulate a penalty for failing to meet that deadline.

Cascade County’s canvass delay is the latest in a series of election management challenges to arise since Merchant took office in January. A pair of special district elections earlier this year sparked a lawsuit against the county, with voters in both alleging that Merchant had mismanaged the elections and requesting that her office redo them. A separate lawsuit involving a levy request by the Great Falls Public Library prompted a Cascade County judge to appoint a third party to monitor that election.

The episodes have fueled increasing criticism of Merchant, a Republican who defeated Democratic incumbent Rina Moore by fewer than 40 votes last year and voiced skepticism about Montana’s election integrity during her campaign. A grassroots group known as the Election Protection Committee continues to call on county officials to relieve Merchant of her election duties ahead of a 2024 cycle set to feature a host of presidential, congressional and statewide races.

That’s a notion Briggs is not just open to, but one he said he proposed both before and after the 2022 election. For Briggs, the suggestion had nothing to do with a particular clerk and recorder’s capabilities — a point he claimed is evident by the fact that he first raised it when Moore, whom he considers not only a friend but a highly competent election administrator, held the post. He said his motivation came from a desire to put Cascade County’s election procedures in the hands of a non-elected, nonpartisan administrator.

“I hope that at some point now — when there’s still time to get everything stabilized before we have the major elections next year — I’m hoping to still get that done,” Briggs said.