Article published Nov 14, 2007

Officials look to mend vote-counting process

By KARL PUCKETT

Tribune Staff Writer

Last week's municipal election in Great Falls went smoothly overall but there's room for improvement, said Deb Mart, Cascade County's elections supervisor.

"We need to make a few tweaks to the system," she said.

Mart's comments came Tuesday following the certification of the election results by the Cascade County Commission. The official vote count, which included 79 provisional ballots, didn't change the outcome of any races.

The elections office spent a considerable amount of time preparing for running an election held at a single polling site at Montana ExpoPark for the first time, Mart said. The single site worked well, she said.

However, more preparation is needed on the "backroom" logistics of running the election, including getting the vote counted sooner, Mart said.

The final votes weren't counted until well after 1 a.m. Nov. 7, more than five hours after the polls closed. Mart originally scheduled 10 people to count the county's absentee ballots, but three had to cancel at the last minute.

"That's why the count was so late," she said.

Next year, more people will be scheduled, Mart said.

The 79 provisional ballots were hand-counted Tuesday afternoon by County Commissioners. Provisional ballots are cast by residents who register on Election Day. The votes can't be counted until later because elections officials must check to ensure the same-day voters didn't vote in another county.

After counting the provisional ballots, commissioners certified the rest of the votes.

The addition of the provisional ballots pushed the total number of residents who voted to 10,423, or 28 percent of registered voters.

In the election, incumbent Mayor Dona Stebbins defeated Ed McKnight in the mayoral race 2,234 votes to 1,930 votes, while Mary Jolley and Bill Bronson won in a five-person race for two spots on the City Commission. Jolly finished with 2,664 votes while Bronson had 2,265 votes.