Missoula County commissioners began the arduous recount process Thursday afternoon for the tight Senate District 49 race, but after three hours the actual counting hadn’t begun.
“We didn’t even get to tally one thing,” elections administrator Rebecca Connors said at 5 p.m. at the county records center in south Missoula.
Connors said it’ll probably be 9:30 or 10 a.m. Friday before commissioners Bill Carey, Jean Curtiss and Michele Landquist start hand counting more than 8,000 ballots cast for Democrat Diane Sands and Republican Dick Haines.
Sands led Haines by 31 votes after county and state canvassing, and Haines posted bond for a recount Monday.
Before the commissioners' recount board can begin tallying ballots, they have to deal with the most technical aspects of the process – rectifying those that were duplicated either when the originals were rejected by machines on Election Day or emailed or faxed in from military personnel overseas.
All of Friday has been set aside for the recount, starting at 8:30 a.m. If it’s not finished by 6 p.m., it’ll resume at 8:30 a.m. Monday.
Connors admitted she was being optimistic when she said there’s a 60 percent chance it’ll be wrapped up Friday. Before the session began at 2 p.m. she estimated it would take commissioners an hour to count 150 ballots, a pace of 17 hours or more.
“It’s a process we can’t rush,” she said.
Sands led Haines by seven votes after election night Nov. 4 and stretched that lead to 31 (3,933 to 3,902) after provisional ballots were counted six days later. That count held through county and state canvasses.
The margin of 0.40 of a percent was slim enough to qualify Haines for a recount but not for free. It would have needed to be 0.25 of a percent, or fewer than 20 votes, to do that. With financial help from Republican backers, Haines posted a bond of $2,637.33 on Monday based on the county's estimated costs for a recount.
Sands and Haines were both on hand Thursday at the Ernest Avenue records center, along with two former state senators as their designated agents. Haines appointed Jim Shockley of Victor for the role. Jon Ellingson of Missoula is representing Sands.
Each commissioner will have between 2,500 and 3,000 ballots to count with a team consisting of one person from each party and a support staff from the county.
Connors said the recount figures to be slower than others in the past because the ballots from the eight precincts that voted on the SD49 race must first be grouped into an abnormal number of categories: military absentee, regular absentee, provisional, polling place ballots, requested hand-count ballots, and those that contain write-in votes.
Commissioners will tally ballots in groups of five, from stacks of 25 at a time.
“It’s a process that requires precision and it’s all done by hand,” Connors said.
Though the actual ballot count for SD49 was something more than 7,800, Connors said the total to be counted is 8,070 because undervotes and overvotes must be included. Those are ballots that contain, respectively, no votes or two votes for the Senate district seat.
SD49 covers southwest Missoula County, generally from Lolo Pass to Lolo and U.S. Highway 93, and from South Reserve Street west to the county line near Alberton and Petty Creek.
Missoula’s is the only recount in the state for a Senate seat. If Sands maintains her edge the Senate will still be controlled by Republicans, 29-21.
In Montana's lone House of Representatives recount challenge, incumbent Margie McDonald extended her lead by one vote to 13 on Tuesday to defeat Republican Tony O'Donnell in House District 51 in south Billings.
What are these people paying so much money for? Stop talking by the water cooler and get to work.
I have to shake my head at this. Only in government. Private industry would never allow something so foolish to happen. 3 hours of doing nothing? Obviously they're getting paid by the hour.