A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
Let’s begin with the turnout. Despite using a mail ballot, and having a contested election, only 15.8 percent of the registered voters in Whitefish’s school district cast ballots. (Table of returns.)
That’s dismal and shameful. Just a week ago, in a mail ballot election on whether to raise Whitefish’s resort tax by 50 percent, 49 percent of the registered voters cast ballots.
The elections were too close together, which no doubt exasperated some voters. Could the elections have been combined? I don’t have a definitive answer, but I suspect that yes, they could have been combined, but no, the people in charge of the elections, for selfish reasons, didn’t want them combined. So in the space of a week, two mail ballot elections were inflicted upon the voters. Whitefish is a smart community, but doing that was stupid.
Moreover, school board elections are becoming a rarity. Montana law allows school districts to cancel trustee elections if only one candidate files for a position. Ostensibly, the objective is saving money. But the effect is to deprecate elections, which is the last thing Montana’s educators should be doing. But doing it they are, and I’m convinced some would prefer that trustees be appointed, not elected.
In the school board election, incumbent Pat Jarvi and newcomer Marguerite Kamenski were elected to three-year terms, and a small levy was approved.
As displayed in the table below, 3,058 votes could have been cast in the trustee election (voters could vote for two candidates), but only 2,513 votes were actually cast, a difference of 545 votes. Could some or all of those 545 potential votes have been write-in votes for Joan Vetter Ehrenberg that were not counted because her write-in campaign was disqualified?
Yes. But, there’s no way of knowing how many of the 545 potential votes were attempted write-ins for Vetter Ehrenberg, or how many attempted write-ins for her would have been valid. Still, she surely received some votes, and had she been on the ballot, she might have been elected.
Source: Whitefish Pilot.