Lincoln County hires new election administrator

Two months after the resignations of Lincoln County’s clerk and recorder and both elections officials, it has filled two of the three positions.

Melanie Howell is the new election administrator. She was hired in May to replace Paula Buff, who along with her assistant, Amanda Eckart, and Clerk and Recorder Robin Benson, resigned in late March.

Howell comes from Grants Pass, Oregon, where she worked in the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office since the beginning of 2020.

Howell said she heard about the job opening in Lincoln County “from a friend of a friend.”

“I definitely wanted to stay in county-type level work,” Howell said.

Howell said she hadn’t done elections work before, but is “always up for a good challenge.”

She said she is learning as she goes and spending a lot of time working with the Montana Secretary of State’s Office for training on how to do the job.

The Alaska-born Howell, who said she has lived most of her life in Oregon, has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Oregon State University.

“I’ve been getting organized with addressing, updating voter rolls and getting ready for the upcoming city council elections,” she said. “It’s very important people make sure their addresses are correct and letting us know if there are changes.”

Libby, Troy, Eureka and Rexford will each hold city council elections on Sept. 12. The deadline for candidates to file to run is June 19.

Howell said some of the attributes she believes will make her a good fit for the job are, “a good eye to detail” and "that she’s very particular that things are done correctly.

Corinna Brown, who took over Benson’s job on an interim basis on March 27, was part of the group who interviewed Howell for the job. Brown said recently a job offer had been made to a person for the assistant position in the Elections Office.

Brown said she didn’t want to comment about why she thought Howell was the best person for the job. Brown also said she hasn’t thought about running for the clerk and recorder position in 2024.

“We’ve been really busy with the school elections and I really want to get a better feel for the job before I decide if I’ll run or not,” Brown said.

District 3 Commissioner Josh Letcher was also part of the hiring committee.

When asked his thoughts why Howell was the best person for the job, he said, “I’ve been through a lot of interviews and she met all of the qualifications.”

Letcher said he didn’t recall how many people had applied for the job.

HOWELL IS the fourth person to hold the election administrator title since 2020. Buff was on the job from 2021 to 2023. Before her, Chris Nelson served from August 2020 to November 2020. He resigned following the general election that year.

Nelson replaced long-time election administrator Leigh Riggleman, who resigned in 2020 while county commissioners wrangled over holding an all mail-in election, meant to avoid the spread of the coronavirus, or a traditional poll election.

Before the resignations of Benson, Buff and Eckart, tensions were on the rise between them and Letcher.

According to the minutes of the March 1 commissioners meeting, Benson sought the hiring of a new employee for the Clerk and Recorder Office because conditions have evolved to where sharing employees is no longer doable. Benson said that about two-plus years ago her office absorbed the county addressing duties, a workload she maintained had grown to require a full-time position.

Benson also believed there was an immediate need for two full-time dedicated election staff focused solely on elections only. She cited the amount of work in the Elections Department, including current duties, legislation, new cyber and physical security requirements, the mass mailing of National Voter Registration Act and 8,500 addresses are being verified and geo-enabled. Benson also said election staff attend daily training with the Secretary of State’s Office.

Letcher, according to the meeting minutes, asked why Buff fired three election judges if the office was so busy. Buff replied that she only removed one judge from serving in elections.

Additionally, Letcher referenced a meeting about the post-election audit and asked Benson if she was able to properly supervise her employees. He also accused Buff of falsifying election documents and said he felt he was ridiculed questioning this at a prior meeting.

Following the November 2022 general election, Letcher said he wanted to see more local races added to the post-election audit in an effort to build confidence in the process. Letcher presented a letter dated Nov. 9 which detailed his recollection of what he termed “major human errors” from elections in 2016, 2020 and 2022.

In 2016, Letcher said a tabulator was not properly programmed for the different arrangements on the ballots from different precincts. He wrote in the letter that, “This oversight mistake could have been the difference in the winner in several local elections. Specifically, District Judge and Clerk of Court.”

Letcher said there were two errors in 2020. One involved a fold in ballots, which created a bad reading in the tabulator. Letcher said it resulted in having to hand count several races in the middle of the ballot.

Benson said the 2020 general election was 100% by mail because of Covid-19 and that all of the ballots were folded. Benson said ballots that are not readable by the tabulator go to a duplication board. The board then determines the voter's intent so the ballot is counted.

The other incident in 2020 was detailed in a previous Western News story. In the account, it was reported that a ballot box was left temporarily unaccounted for in the days after the November election. Officials stressed that the votes it contained were tabulated within the timeframe allowed by the state and were never at risk of being tampered with.

Then-County Administrator Patrick McFadden acknowledged the mistake, but said he viewed the incident in a positive light considering it was quickly caught and rectified.

Letcher’s letter concluded with the ballot printing mistake that occurred in the June 2022 primary that resulted in county election officials hand-counting all ballots for all races.