Extra Team is Added to Elections Board for Write-In Candidates in Missoula

With Election Day coming up, the Missoula County Elections Office is preparing for numerous write in candidates this election cycle. In preparation, Elections Administrator Rebecca Connors said an extra team has been brought in to help tally votes. Connors explained how it works:

"We have three machines that scan the absentee ballots that come back, so basically we have a sign up board per machine," Connors said. "Typically in larger elections we use three machines and that's why we have three boards, so that's why we're bringing in a third team. It just depends. We'll just keep working until all of those ballots are read. I'm not sure how long it will take, but we're prepared to count them all until the end."

Connors said each team is also selected in a particular way:

"We do one of each party...Well, we don't try to have a majority of party I should say," Connors said. "As our election judge, when they sign up for training and commit to being an election judge, they have to declare their party. That could be no party, could be libertarian, could be republican, democrat, we just have to make sure there's not a majority party counting those names. Not two republicans or two democrats are counting those names; We want to make sure that there's different eyes looking at the process."

The write in candidate filing deadline was September 26.