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Flathead County judge orders two Kalispell elections be re-done – Daily Montanan [1]

['Nicole Girten', 'More From Author', '- February']

Date: 2024-02-27  

A Flathead County District Court judge ordered two Kalispell city council elections be redone after a clerical error resulted in more than 1,400 voters receiving ballots with the incorrect candidates listed.

The decision means two winning incumbents may no longer claim victories for the time being.

In an order filed earlier this month, Judge Robert Allison said the elections for two out of four city council seats, representing Ward One and Ward Two in Kalispell, would have to be redone, noting how close the results in those elections were.

Ward One candidates Kari Sue Gabriel and Wes Walker were 80 votes apart, while Ward Two candidates Gabriel Dillon and Sam Nunnally were separated by 109 votes.

Incumbents Sue Gabriel and Nunnally had won the incorrect election, according to the canvass. Candidates largely campaigned on mitigating the population growth and housing crisis in the region.

The Flathead County Elections Department is working with its legal advisors on how to proceed in selecting a date for the election redo, a representative from the office told the Daily Montanan on Tuesday.

Allison said in his order, first reported by the Flathead Beacon, the Ward Three election didn’t need to be redone because the irregularities in the 64 impacted ballots in the race did not affect the outcome.

The Ward Four election was an uncontested race, and therefore didn’t need repeating, the order said.

One-hundred seventy-six voters submitted ballots with incorrect ward candidates, after updated ward boundary information wasn’t updated into the elections system.

Flathead County Election Administrator Debbie Pierson in a December court filing asked the court to annul the Nov. 7 election. Pierson told the court her office discovered days before the election the new ward boundaries approved by the city of Kalispell in Dec. 2021 weren’t entered into their election system.

This error meant 1,413 absentee ballots, representing 8% of Kalispell voters, received incorrect ballots. The December filing said the county will be fronting the cost of another election. The elections department did not respond to a call Tuesday afternoon requesting how much the re-do election would cost the county.

The February order said Pierson had the right to challenge the results, citing state statute, “…although her office is at fault for conducting the Election improperly in the first place.” Pierson, a Republican, has held the position of Clerk and Recorder for more than nine years.

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[1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2024/02/27/flathead-county-judge-orders-two-kalispell-elections-be-re-done/

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