Clerk and recorder, election workers resign in Lincoln County

With a handful of school board elections around the corner, the Lincoln County clerk and recorder and staff of the county’s Elections Department have resigned from their posts.

Lincoln County Human Resources Director Dallas Bowe said she had received letters of resignation from Clerk and Recorder Robin Benson and both employees in the Elections Department, Election Administrator Paula Buff and her assistant, Amanda Eckart.

Bowe said the letters were confidential and she would not be releasing any information from them.

Word of the departures came in a March 24 letter sent by Buff sharing a list of candidates for school board trustee positions. Buff announced her resignation in the correspondence, which went to local media outlets.

Buff took over the election administrator position a little more than two years ago following the resignation of Chris Nelson just days after the 2020 general election. According to previous reporting in The Western News, Nelson didn’t respond to requests for comment. Then-County Administrator Patrick McFadden said Nelson left the job for personal reasons.

Nelson only served in the position from August 2020 to November 2020. He was appointed following the resignation of previous election administrator Leigh Riggleman.

At the time, county officials gave no reason for Riggleman’s resignation. She departed after the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners switched from her proposed all mail-in election — meant to prevent the spread of Covid-19 on Election Day — to a traditional poll election. After her resignation, commissioners changed course again, favoring a mail-in voting process.

Benson wore many hats for the county over the years, also serving as auditor and assessor surveyor. Benson first won the clerk and recorder post in 2014.

She was reelected most recently to the position in November with 100% of the votes, a total of 7,791. Her vote total was more than all but two of the 13 local races appearing on the 2022 general election ballot in November. Only Sheriff Darren Short and Coroner Steve Schnackenberg received more votes.

Two of those local races included county commissioner seats, which were claimed by Brent Teske and Jim Hammons.

The commissioners are unsure of how the May 2 elections will be conducted.

Teske, a former mayor who represents the Libby area, said he hadn't seen the resignation letters and that it was too soon to know how elections will be handled.

"Ultimately, we'll have to fill those positions, but that will run through human resources," Teske said. "I haven't seen the letters so I am not sure why they resigned."

Teske cited Montana Code Annotated 7-4-2206 in terms of filling the vacant positions.

In part, it states, "Vacancies in all county offices, except that of county commissioner, must be filled by appointment by the board of county commissioners."

Hammons, one-time mayor of Troy and former county administrator, said he knew about the resignations, but didn't know any additional information.

County Commissioner Josh Letcher, first elected to represent the Eureka area in 2018 and the current board chair, did not immediately return a request for comment.

TENSIONS HAVE been on the rise between Letcher, Benson and Buff over the last several months. Matters came to a head at a board of commissioner’s meeting in early March.

According to the minutes of the March 1 meeting, Benson sought the hiring of a new employee for the Clerk and Recorder Office because conditions have changed to where sharing employees is no longer workable. Benson said that about 2-plus years ago her office absorbed the county addressing duties. That job, she maintained, has steadily grown in the intervening years.

Benson also saw a need for two full-time dedicated election workers. She cited the amount of work carried out by the Elections Department, including managing current duties alongside new cyber and physical security requirements, implementing state legislation and federal law, and the verification of 8,500 addresses. Benson also said Elections Department employees attend daily training with the Montana Secretary of State’s Office.

Letcher, according to the meeting minutes, pressed Buff on the removal of several election judges given the department’s workload. Buff commented that she only removed one judge from serving in the elections.

Letcher also referenced a meeting about the post-election audit and asked Benson if she was able to properly supervise her employees. He accused Buff of falsifying election documents, according to the minutes, and said he felt he was ridiculed for 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. At the time, 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 bad fold in ballots that led to a bad reading in the tabulator. Letcher said it resulted in having to hand count several races.

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 were unreadable by the tabulator went to a duplication board. The board then determines the voter's intent so that the ballot is counted.

The other incident in 2020 was detailed in a previous story in The Western News. 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 allowed that a mistake occurred, but said he viewed the incident in a positive light considering it was caught and rectified in time.

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

Incidentally, there are four elections that are planned in the coming months.

Two are planned in Troy School District 1 and are listed as mail-in elections. Lori Damon and Blair Shupe are vying for a 3-year term for an elementary school board seat. For a 3-year term for the high school seat in the Yaak/McCormick area, Chelsea Franke and Jan Fontaine are on the ballot.

The second is for Eureka School District 13. There are four candidates vying for two open seats for 3-year terms for the elementary/high school. They include Amber Wyatt, Joan C. Moeller, Brianna Van Orden and Rodney Schmidt. It is also scheduled to be a mail-in election.

Trego School District 53 also has two open, 3-year seats with four candidates. They include Dave Scott, James W. Carlton, Henry Broers and Mark Sephar. The election is scheduled to be conducted at a polling place.