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Staples in Ballots are no good

Gallatin County Still Counting Election Ballots

By Lucia Stewart, 11-05-08

Update: Gallatin County completed counting the remaining 10 precincts at 5:30pm. Obama won with 23,984 votes over McCain with 22,375 votes.

Gallatin County is still processing ballots through the counting machines, with over 15,000 ballots left and are not expecting to finish until late this afternoon.

The clincher is that over 21,000 of the absentee ballots returned were pocked with staples marks and could not be processed by the automated reader. All unreadable ballots were then presented to a 3-person board that recreates a duplicate ballot for scanning. Another setback was the courthouse still had a line of 150 people when the polls closed at 8pm.

These 10 remaining of the 36 Gallatin County precincts are the only ones in the state not counted. Some of the statewide close elections may hinge on Gallatin County’s results, such as Secretary of State that currently holds a 2,000 vote difference.

For an updated county-by-county election results in Montana, check the Montana Secretary of State website. For the Gallatin County election results, click here.

Legislative Race:
Senator District 33: Bob Hawks - D
Senator District 34: Joe Balyeat - R
Representative District 63: Jennifer JP Pomnichowski - D
Representative District 64: Franke Wilmer - D
Representative District 65: Brady Wiseman - D
Representative District 66: Mike Phillips - D
Representative District 67: Gordon Vance - R
Representative District 68: Scott Sales - R
Representative District 69: Ted Washburn - R
Representative District 70: Michael “Mike” More - R

Ballot Issues:
C-44: Against
LR-118: For
I-155: For

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By Lucia Stewart, 11-05-08 | comments (1) | email story | print story

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Comments

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By Kay Reeves, 11-05-08

Thanks for this story as it is the only up to date information on the web as to why Gallatin County is still counting. But I'm really wondering, who put the staples in the ballots in the first place?

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