Kalispell voters await word on potential election redo

This story is excerpted from the MT Lowdown, a weekly newsletter digest containing original reporting and analysis published every Friday.

More than a month since Kalispell’s 2023 municipal election in November, voters in the city’s four city council races continue to wait for word on whether they’ll have to cast their ballots a second time. Due to a clerical error Flathead County says impacted more than 1,400 voters, county officials last month requested that a district court annul the election results and permit the county elections department to readminister the election.

The error at the heart of Kalispell’s current situation occurred when county elections staff failed to input new city council boundaries for the four city council wards into the state’s election system, resulting in at least 176 voters receiving and casting the wrong ballots. In a petition to the court, Flathead County Clerk and Recorder Debbie Pierson specifically asked for court approval for her department to readminister and pay for new elections in all four races since all four wards have new boundaries.

But at least one Kalispell city council member has argued that the scope of any readministered election should be narrowed. Ryan Hunter, the Ward 3 incumbent who was re-elected by the Nov. 7 tally, filed a motion to intervene in the case. He’s urging Flathead County District Court Judge Robert Allison to exclude his and one other council race from a potential electoral redo. Two-thirds of the incorrect ballots went out to voters in Ward 1 who should have received ballots for Ward 2. In an affidavit to the court, Hunter argued that, since the number of impacted votes in his own Ward 3 race (64) fell far short of his margin of victory (372), the judge should exclude his race from any annulment of last month’s results.

Hunter, who says he put $4,000 and 98 hours of door-knocking into his campaign, argues that ordering a redo will force him to spend more money, time and effort on campaigning to hold his seat.

He also points out that the Ward 4 victor — incumbent Sid Daoud, chair of the Montana Libertarian Party — ran unopposed. As Hunter put it, it would be “hard to justify” spending taxpayer money to readminister two elections when the county’s mistake would not have impacted the outcome in either. Pierson declined earlier this month to estimate the total cost of redoing the elections, noting that it’s unclear yet where that process might be headed.