In May 2023, Elliot Merja urged Cascade County officials not to approve the election results of the Fort Shaw Irrigation District that took place earlier that month. Merja was a candidate, and he raised his concerns during the election canvass meeting.“Whether I win or not doesn’t matter to me, but this election was run as such a farce that it should not stand, and it can’t stand,” Merja said at the meeting.Nearly a year and a half later, Cascade County District Court Judge David Grubich recently threw out the results of that election, which was plagued with mistakes at the hands of election administrators. As a result, court-ordered special elections will be held for Fort Shaw Irrigation Districts 2 and 4. District 5, which was also part of the lawsuit, will not get a special election because the lawsuit lasted longer than the one-year term for that seat.The mistakes were numerous. Some eligible voters in the district didn’t receive ballots and didn’t get to vote. Ballots were sent without secrecy envelopes, return envelopes or information about where to return them. And confusion spread among officials over statutes that dictated who could vote on behalf of landowners in the special election district. Still, a county canvass board approved the election results after hearing about these issues.The canvass board included County Commissioner Rae Grulkowski, County Commissioner Jim Larson and Clerk of District Court Tina Henry.Two candidates in that election raised concerns and ultimately filed the lawsuit. Merja, who ran in district 5, was one. The other was Riley Denning, who ran in district 4. Both lost the election based on the returns received.Steve Potts, the attorney for Denning and Merja, told Montana Free Press that he wasn’t ready for the overlapping errors that led to the lengthy and complex lawsuit.“Everything that could have been done wrong was done wrong,” Potts said. “So hopefully they’ll do better this time around.”“Everything that could have been done wrong was done wrong.”Steve Potts, attorney for plaintiffs Elliot Merja and Riley DenningFort Shaw Irrigation District (FSID) elections are different from a typical election. Property owners in the district get one vote per acre of irrigable land, and joint landowners can designate one person to vote for the entire property.Among the mistakes cited in the lawsuit, Cascade County Elections Supervisor Lynn DeRoche and FSID Secretary Charla Merja coordinated on a letter to district voters that incorrectly said joint landowners must designate a voter for the coming election. They didn’t realize that the law had been updated so that any designations made in past elections would remain in effect unless property owners requested a change. Charla Merja and DeRoche ultimately realized this but sent the letters anyway, noting that the records of designated voters from prior elections had been sealed. The lawsuit claimed they didn’t want to go through the process of unsealing the records “as a matter of expediency.” As a result, some in the district didn’t get their full share of votes. Others didn’t receive a ballot at all.Denning, for example, said he was designated to vote for 619 acres that he co-owned with his wife. But he wasn’t able to cast those votes in the 2023 election. He instead received ballots only representing the 197 acres he owns by himself.“I never got the ballots for the other 619 acres,” Denning told county officials during the 2023 canvass meeting. “And that is wrong.”The election was conducted under Cascade County Clerk and Recorder Sandra Merchant, who had won the office the prior fall and was new to elections administration.The lawsuit cites Merchant’s statements that she “didn’t know what was going on,” and an affidavit from Charla Merja said that, in 2023, “it became obvious the historical knowledge of the irrigation district was no longer in that office.” Merchant failed to check or correct the actions of DeRoche and Charla Merja, and her office mailed ballots past the deadline and without proper envelopes and instructions.This was an early chapter in a dramatic series of events that led to changes in Cascade County elections management. Great Falls Public Schools criticized Merchant’s handling of a trustee election, which was also in May 2023. That led the Great Falls Public Library to get a court-appointed monitor for its 2023 levy election. Incidentally, that monitor was Lynn DeRoche.The rest of the story is well-known. Cascade County commissioners removed election administration duties from Merchant and appointed Terry Thompson as elections administrator. That appointment process led to a $52,000 discrimination settlement brought by Rina Fontana Moore, the former clerk and recorder for 16 years.With elections under different leadership from when the lawsuit began, Judge Grubich only briefly addressed the actions of Merchant and the county in the 2023 FSID election.“Further, regarding ballot irregularities involving Cascade County and Sandra Merchant, those issues have been mooted by ordering special elections,” Grubich wrote.While the lawsuit was ongoing, Elliot Merja ran and lost again for FSID district 5, which was up for election on May 7, 2024. The election was conducted by the county elections office under Thompson, who will also oversee the court-ordered elections for districts 2 and 4.The lawsuit originally included the West Great Falls Flood and Drainage Control District, but stakeholders in that election were dismissed prior to the final judgment. A new election date for the FSID has not yet been set.In-depth, independent reporting on the stories impacting your community from reporters who know your town.The post Cascade County judge voids irrigation district election over administrative errors appeared first on Montana Free Press.