Write-in candidates throw new wrinkle in Missoula election process

Zeier left that post earlier this year, before Josh Clark bucked the norm and filed for sheriff against Democratic primary winner T.J. McDermott just under the Sept. 26 deadline.

In these days of ever-increasing automation, it will take some good old-fashioned hand-counting Tuesday to tally not only the votes Clark receives but those of the only statewide write-in candidate, David Browder.

Browder filed against Democratic primary winner Nate McConnell in House District 89, which covers a broad swath of southern Missoula from south of Lolo to east of Clinton.

Zeier's replacement, Rebecca Connors, is confident her people will have the write-in wrinkles covered.

"Whenever we have a write-in candidate that files, then our procedure is we assign a team per machine. We have three large machines," Connors said Monday at the Missoula County Fairgrounds, where preparations for Election Day were buzzing in four buildings.

Roughly two-thirds of the 32,000 absentee ballots issued had been received by noon Monday, when registration for them ended. How many of those 21,000 ballots will have votes for Clark written in won't be known until late Tuesday night, though machine counting of the mail-in ballots begins at noon.

"For counting procedures, the machines read the oval that the voter has marked, but the machine is not sophisticated enough to say who that person is or if they're a valid candidate," Connors said. "A voter can write in anybody's name. You can write in Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck or a valid candidate's name."

All other votes on the ballot are tallied mechanically. But the write-in votes will have to be vetted individually. Connors said teams made up of representatives from each candidate's camp will check the vote for its viability. Neither Mickey Mouse nor Donald Duck made the write-in filing deadline, so votes for them are discarded.

At the 28 polling places around the county, the M100s weed out those ballots with write-in votes to be counted at the fairgrounds.

"So we won't really know what the write-in candidate totals are until the very end of the night," Connors said.

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Polls throughout Missoula County are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday. 

If you're not sure where your polling place is – and some have changed since the 2012 election because of redistricting – the easiest thing to do is go to the Secretary of State's My Voter Page app app.mt.gov/voeterinfo, which the county's missoulavotes.com website has a link to.

Your name and date of birth will lead you to a page with directions to your polling place and a sample ballot you can run through beforehand to expedite the process.

Procedures for same-day registration have been tweaked since 2012, when dozens were still in line outside election headquarters long after 8 p.m. 

Connors said the latecomers should plan on going to the Commercial Building next door. There, 250 chairs have been set up. Registrants will be called over to the election office 15 at a time on a first-come, first-served basis.

New, too, this year is a feature Secretary of State Linda McCulloch recently approved: pre-registration kiosks that will be set up in the Commercial Building. While you wait there, you can enter all your pertinent information, so when you get over to the election office it'll be a quicker process to register.

Late registrants can come to the Commercial Building any time after 8 a.m., but they must be inside by 8 p.m. Law enforcement will be on hand to assure the cut-off time is enforced, Connors said.

Shortly after 8 p.m. and then in increments throughout the rest of the evening, counties will upload results first to the secretary of state's website, electionresults.sos.mt.gov, and then to missoulavotes.com. Connors said the lag time between the two should be only a minute or two.

Watch Missoulian.com as well throughout election night for updated results from all eight counties in western Montana, and statewide totals.