An Election Day Post-Mortem

By Marjorie Smith, 11-09-06

I’ll admit it, I was flattered when the Washington Monthly signed me up to post blog entries on election day although I suspect I was selected pretty much at random from among NewWest's Montana writers. But magine that! A national publication that cared about what happened in Montana!

What they wanted were reports “from real Montanans” about the one race that would have an effect upon the nation as a whole, the Tester-Burns contest for the senate. And as it happened, my home – Gallatin County – became a major part of the reason the results of that race weren’t known until the wee small hours of the morning (or officially until Thursday when Conrad Burns finally conceded).

Because there were still people voting in the Gallatin County courthouse after the polls closed at 8 PM – people taking advantage of the new Montana law allowing people to register and vote on election day – Shelley Vance, county clerk and recorder, would not allow release of any results until every last voter had exercised their right to vote.

I should have seen it coming earlier in the afternoon. “The real story is down at the courthouse,” Nancy Robertson had told me. “People are waiting in line for two hours to register and vote.”

As it turned out, people waited four hours. I’m romantic – perhaps even sentimental – about the right to vote and people who exercise it, so although I counted at least 80 people in a line that stretched from the elections office around the courthouse lobby, out the side door, down the sidewalk to the corner and west on Main Street for half a block, I didn’t ask any of them what brought them to the courthouse or whom they planned to vote for. It just seemed invasive of their right to a secret ballot. It also didn’t occur to me at the time to wonder what would happen to people who arrived just before 8 PM determined to register.

A woman who’d been working for hours handing out the registration forms and election information booklets was moist-eyed as she gave me the four hour wait-time figure. “Imagine!” she said. “People around the world are fighting for the right to vote and waiting in long lines.”

“And so are people in Bozeman, Montana,” I finished for her, feeling a little teary-eyed myself.

I’d met Nancy Robertson earlier at the Reno Sales Stadium on the Montana State University campus, where six Bozeman precincts had moved their polling places since the last general election. Nancy was a volunteer greeter, helping people figure out where to go to find their particular polling place. An elderly friend had told me she intended to vote absentee henceforth because if was too darn hard to find her way to the polls at the stadium, and Nancy agreed that there had been some grumbling about the changes. She also explained to anyone who would listen that the changes were required under new laws guaranteeing access to the ballot box to all – the small neighborhood schools and the suburban fire station the stadium replaced were not wheelchair accessible; the university fieldhouse was also harder to get to.

Unfortunately, the parking at the stadium was random and disorganized so that it would be very difficult for people who needed it to find their way to the handicapped parking spaces right outside the stadium building’s main entrance.

“Perhaps that’s something we can deal with before the next election,” said Charlotte Mills, currently an employee in the Gallatin County elections office who was elected Tuesday to take over as clerk and recorder in January.

I called the elections office on Thursday because the Bozeman Chronicle had reported that only 200 ballots had been cast by people who registered and voted on election day.

“That’s not an accurate figure,” Mills said. “There were 419 people who registered and voted on Tuesday. The last one voted at midnight.”

“They should have been prepared for this,” Democrat campaign worker Elizabeth Darrow had complained at about 6 PM on election day. “They should have hired extra people.”

“I understand that they did,” I said. “They’ve had temps handling all the absentee ballots for sometime.”

According to Charlotte Mills, about 11,000 people voted absentee in Gallatin County in this election, a huge percentage for a county with a total population well under 100,000. “People don’t have to give a reason anymore to get an absentee ballot,” she said. “I think they like the convenience, and the fact that they can be put on the permanent list to vote by mail.”

The total number of registered voters in Gallatin County is not yet available; neither is the level of voter participation although Mills predicts it will turn out to be a little lower than the 80 percent mentioned in the newspaper.

As for criticisms about the election office’s handling of election day registrations, Mills said they were prepared to handle same-day registration (this was the first year Montana allowed election day registration) but they were not prepared for the number of people who showed up.

So what will they do differently for the next election?

“The problem is, everything may change again,” Mills said. “There will be a legislative session next year where they’ll probably change the election law, and we’ll have new issues to deal with.”

But back to election day itself. There’s always someone to dump a little cold water on my romantic take on the sacred rite of voting. One Democrat volunteer who was heading out at 6 PM on election day to see if there were any voters who needed a last minute ride to the polls said, “I’m not sure the long line at the courthouse is a good sign. Maybe it’s just the result of the last minute dirty campaigning.”

It’s possible that word of the four-hour wait will get around next time and inspire people to register ahead of time for the next election although there will probably always be people whose attention is finally caught by some last-minute scandal. I’m more intrigued wondering whether the trend toward early (absentee) voting will have an effect upon future campaigns.

How would you know when to time an October/November surprise if twenty percent of the people are voting a week or two ahead of time?

One victim of a last minute dirty trick campaign was interested in that question. Democrat Franke Wilmer, a professor of political science at MSU, won her race to represent northeast Bozeman but the last few days were tense. On Friday, November 3, the Bozeman Chronicle published on page 7 (the page opposite the third page of letters to the editor) a half page ad headed “An open question for H.D. 64 candidate Franke Wilmer.” The ad asserted that Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks had no record of Wilmer purchasing a hunting, fish or conservation license anytime in the past ten years. The ad, paid for by “concerned sportsmen, outdoor enthusiasts and licensed hunters,” was not directly associated with Wilmer’s opponent, hunting outfitter Jim Klug.

It also wasn’t true. On Saturday the Chronicle’s lead story in its second section was written by reporter Walt Williams and headlined, “Campaign ad misrepresents Wilmer’s hunting record.”

“Walt called me at 1 PM on Friday and said he wanted to talk to me about the ad because he just found out from the state that I’d had four licenses over the past ten years,” Wilmer said Thursday. “They ran the story. But they also ran in Sunday’s paper two letters to the editor repeating the lies in the ad. That was in direct violation of their own letters to the editor policies which state that letters will be edited if they are libelous. They already knew that was untrue but they published the letters anyway.”

Wilmer says she didn’t buy any ads in the Chronicle during the campaign but depended upon door to door canvassing and a website to get her message across. In next January’s legislative session she says she’ll depend upon the internet to communicate with her constituents.

At about 9 PM on election night, I wandered over to Democratic headquarters (less than a block from my house; I seem to lead an idyllic life from a previous century – while other voters are trying to maneuver through badly-parked cars at the stadium, my polling place is still in the elementary school across the street.) Word had just come that the Democrats had captured the U.S. House of Representatives and the party faithful were jubilant. One by one, candidates took the microphone to thank their supporters and express optimism for the results that would finally come out of the Gallatin County Courthouse.

Franke Wilmer added an extra bit of color to the proceedings. “I just thought you’d all like to know that I have attached the rack from the four-point buck I shot a few years ago to the grille of my car,” she said.

There’s a politician who knows how to make her point.
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