Democrats limited in commissioner vote

Since there are no Democrats running in the Lincoln County Commissioner race this year, voting in the June 3 primary will present a conundrum: Do you vote on a Republican ballot for county commissioner or on the Democrat ballot for the presidential nominee?

According to the elections deputy for Lincoln County, Leigh Riggleman, this year’s county commissioner race involving six Republicans and no Democrats has created a unique voting situation.

“Say you want to vote for a Democratic president and the Republican commissioner, you have to choose (to vote for) one or the other,” Riggleman said.

No names for county commissioner will be on the Democratic ballot since there are none running — a first for Lincoln County.

“For the commissioner race, we’ve never had all of one party,” Riggleman said. “We’ve had at least one candidate on the Republican and one on the Democratic — we’ve never had six republicans file.”

Riggleman noted that since Montana does not require any citizen who is registering to vote to declare a party, voters can decide which primary to vote in at the last minute.

“When you go to vote at the polling place, you will get a Democratic ballot and a Republican ballot. You wil go to the booth and you choose which ballot to vote,” she said.

For Democrat voters at least, the only county commissioner voting option will be to write in a name, making sure to check the write-in box.

The highest number of votes on the democratic ballot will be offerred the democratic nomination for county commissioner, as long as the person has not held a political office as a republican and is not republican ballot winner.

If they refuse the nomination, the person with the next number of votes will be offerred the nomination and so on.

“The write-ins won’t count as a Republican vote, but will count as a Democratic vote, so there is a possibility that one (of the Republican candidates) could be offerred a Democratic nomination to be a Democratic candidate on the November ballot,” said Riggleman. “Even the guy down the street, any person who receives the highest number of write-in ballots, will be offerred (the Democratic nomination).”

That individual’s name would also need to have received at least 5 percent of the total votes in the last county commissioner election, according to election guidelines. For example, if 1,000 people vote, the Democratic write-in candidate would need at least 50 votes to be offerred the Democratic nomination.

In 2006, county commissioner Marianne Roose won the race with 3,752 votes, which means the winning Democratic candidate would need to be written in by at least 188 voters.