Mitchell drafts bill that would require hand count of ballots

State Rep. Braxton Mitchell, R-Columbia Falls, has introduced a bill that would prohibit electronic tabulation of votes in future elections.

Under the bill, all ballots would have to be counted manually, by people, not machines.

A draft of the bill was completed last week.

But if it passes, Flathead County alone estimates it would cost tens of thousands more to run an election.

County recording and election office manager Monica Eisenzimer said the cost of just judges would run close to an additional $40,000, and that’s not to mention the errors that human beings make or the peripheral cost of employing additional people, additional supplies, renting space for accommodating people, additional security for three to five more days depending on the number of contests on the ballot. She noted there are still several counties in Montana that hand count their ballots but most of them are quite small. Flathead County has 73,813 registered voters. Using ballot machines has come into question after the 2020 election, where many members of the Republican Party and President Donald Trump’s campaign charged that voting machines in some states were rigged.

Despite numerous court challenges, there was no evidence of widespread election fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Now the manufacturers of the voting machines, including Dominion, have filed defamation suits against Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s attorney, claiming that Giuliani carried out a “viral disinformation campaign about Dominion,” according to a story in the New York Times. Montana currently uses ballots that can both be hand counted and optically scanned. Voters darken a circle next to the candidates they voted for using a pen. The state doesn’t use Dominion machines. Neighboring states use a variety of methods. Wyoming, for example, has a variety of different voting methods, including hand marked ballots, electronic ballot marking devices and direct recording devices, that employ computers that record votes directly into the computers’ memory. Those types of interfaces may incorporate touchscreens, dials, or mechanical buttons. Montana is nly one of 14 states that hand counts at least some of its ballots.

Mitchell said in an email that he hadn't formally introduced the bill yet.

"(I'm) just waiting to get a feel for the lobby presence for and against it before I decide to move forward or not with it," he said Wednesday.