Columbia Falls School District discovers ballot mailing delay

Columbia Falls School District worked to rectify a situation last week when it learned there was a delay in mailing out more than a thousand ballots for its trustee election.

“We found out that 1,074 ballots were not mailed until Friday, April 22. The zip codes affected were 59936, 59937, 59913, and 59919,” Columbia Falls Superintendent Dave Wick noted in a letter to voters posted on the school’s website.

Those zip codes include West Glacier, Coram, Hungry Horse and Whitefish.

School districts had a window of April 13-18 to mail ballots.

The district sent a total of 9,609 ballots to a third-party printing and bulk mailing service on April 14 with a majority of the ballots going out on the same day, according to the letter.

Wick said Thursday that the printer made an error when it didn’t mail out a box of ballots for those zip codes.

The delayed ballots arrived in Columbia Falls from Missoula on April 25.

Since it may be too late to mail ballots and still get them to the school district offices to count them by the 8 p.m. deadline on May 3, the district set up drop boxes monitored by election judges at Canyon Elementary and at the district administration offices in Columbia Falls.

The Canyon offices have been open from noon to 4 p.m. each day and will be open Monday as well.

The Columbia Falls administration office is also is accepting ballots from 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday and from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. on election day Tuesday. It can also provide a replacement ballot with proper identification if a registered voter did not receive their ballot.

“We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

“We are doing everything possible to ensure your voice is heard,” Wick noted in a letter to voters.

The election features five candidates for two seats. There is no mill levy election this year.

For more information, call the school election administrator at 406-892-6554.