Election recount ends in a tie vote

Council waits for advice from the city attorney before choosing a winner

By RICHARD HANNERS / Whitefish Pilot

More than two weeks after the mail-in ballots were due, no winner has been declared for a third seat in the Whitefish City Council.

A hand recount on Monday found former city councilor Turner Askew and White-fish City-County Planning Board chairman Martin McGrew tied at 696-696.

According to state law, the decision now goes to the city council, but the council opted not to choose a winner at their regular meeting Monday night.

City manager Gary Marks said there wasn't sufficient time to adequately notify the public before putting the election decision on the agenda.

To compound the problem, city attorney John Phelps is on vacation and it is unclear whether the current council or the council that will be seated next year — including a new mayor and one new councilor — should pick the winner.

Marks said the current council could choose between Askew and McGrew at its next regular meeting on Dec. 3, but the decision to do so has not been made.

The last time the council decided an election was in 1995 when Ken Williams and Jody Fonner tied in their race for a council seat. Phelps' interpretation at that time was that the new council should make the decision, and the council vote was conducted by secret ballot.

The race for a third city council seat has had an interesting history so far. Askew narrowly defeated McGrew in the first ballot count on election day, 608-604. But a recount the next day added 232 ballots, and McGrew ended up narrowly defeating Askew, 694-692.

Flathead County election manager Monica Eisenzimer reported that more than 30 ballots were damaged by a machine that opened ballot envelopes. In addition, ballots jammed in the machine initially used to scan the ballots because they were fed too quickly into the machine.

Officials then ran the ballots two more times through a machine Eisenzimer has more trust in. She said the results came out the same each time, and she was confident in the results.

Askew, however, asked for a recount after the Flathead County commissioners canvassed the vote on Nov. 13. Because his margin of defeat was less than a quarter of a percent, the county paid for the recount.

The second recount didn't cost taxpayers anything because county staff and two elected official did the work, Eisenzimer said.

Nine people spent a couple hours completing the hand count. Staff from the election department and the clerk and recorder's office were joined by Flathead County superintendent of schools Marcia Sheffels and county treasurer Adele Krantz.