Recount upholds outcome of treasurer's race

By BRENT SHRUM Western News Editor

A recount of votes in the Lincoln County treasurer's race has upheld challenger Nancy Trotter Sutton's victory over incumbent Geri Miller by an even narrower margin than the nine votes that separated the two candidates in the original count.

In Monday's hand recount, Sutton emerged victorious by 3,581 votes to Miller's 3,575, a six-vote difference. The original machine count had Sutton winning 3,576 to 3,567.

Most of the 13 votes missed in the first count were marked on ballots with a pen instead of a pencil, said Lincoln County Clerk and Recorder Coral Cummings. The tabulating machine can't read marks made in ink and would have counted those as undervotes, Cummings said.

"An undervote is usually where somebody has voted for neither position," she said.

However, those ballots should have been "kicked out" by the machine and checked by hand on election night, Cummings added.

"Whoever was running that machine should have grabbed that ballot and it should have gone to the resolution board," she said.

Cummings said the employees who operate the machine have been made aware of the issue and will take steps to ensure it doesn't happen again. She described the miscount as "human error" rather than a fault with the machine.

"It did restore my faith in my tabulator," she said.

A Democrat, Miller has worked for the county since 1980 and has been treasurer since 1989. Sutton is a Republican and has been the office manager for the Lincoln County superintendent of schools since January 1994. She has also served as the secretary to the Lincoln County Tax Appeal Board since 1996 and has been involved in numerous other local organizations as a board member, secretary or volunteer, including KooteNet Kootenai Senior Citizens Center in Troy and the Montana Association of School Business Officials.