FJBC elections to continue as planned

Thursday’s Flathead Joint Board of Control (FJBC) meeting ended with a vote to cancel the upcoming election.

After almost an hour of discussion, a 9 - 2 vote passed the resolution, effectively cancelling the May 3 election in the eyes of the FJBC.

The resolution was brought to the table after over 760 ballots were not mailed out to possible voters for this year. According to Lake County Election Administrator Kathy Newgard, the ballots weren’t mailed because they were to be sent to corporations or co-owners of irrigable land that had not mailed in affidavits specifying who would represent those multi-person entities as the elector, as is required under Montana Code - Section 85-7-1710: Qualification of electors and nature of voting rights.

The FJBC believes that the ballots should have been mailed even in absence of the affidavits. According to the FJBC, the May 3 election is now illegal because under Montana Code - Section 13-19-207: When materials to be mailed, subsection 2, it states, “All ballots mailed to electors on the active list and the provisionally registered list must be mailed the same day.” And because over 760 ballots were withheld in-lieu of affidavits to designate who the ballots were to be sent to, all ballots sent out are invalid. But according to Lake County Attorney Steve Eschenbacher, this isn’t true.

Eschenbacher maintains that the decision reached by the Lake County Elections Office to withhold the ballots that had no designated elector was legal. “We explained this to them back on Feb. 29 that where there are corporations or out-of-state owners, they have to designate someone who is a qualified Montana elector,” Eschenbacher said. “When you have a corporation, they may have a president, a vice president, a secretary… only one of those people can vote. We needed to know who was authorized to do that.”

Eschenbacher also said that the FJBC does not have the ability to legally cancel the election and says it will go on as planned but, “We just administer it. What they do with the results is up to them,” Eschenbacher said.

According to the Lake County Elections Office, any party that has not brought in affidavits can bring in the appropriate paperwork to receive their ballots for the May 3 election.