Amid uncertainty over voting, Cascade County group says it will monitor upcoming elections

A group of Cascade County residents, including a former county commissioner, announced the formation of an ad-hoc committee to monitor upcoming special elections.

Former Cascade County commissioner Jane Weber told attendees at a press conference Wednesday the Cascade Election Protection Committee would investigate, monitor and demand transparency from the county’s elections office.

The committee of about 14 residents formed after Cascade elections administrator Sandra Merchant last month said her office would face difficulty administering five upcoming special elections. Those include school board races, an irrigation district and a levy for the Great Falls Public Library.

Weber says committee members were not satisfied when Merchant publicly presented her plan for upcoming elections on March 31.

“It became painfully obvious to us watching how the operations of the election office did not seem to be moving in a very efficient fashion, and communications were very difficult to obtain,” Weber said.

Merchant had been scheduled to publicly test the county’s vote-counting machine Wednesday, but moved the test to April 25 with minimal public notice.

This is Merchant’s first election since she beat the former longtime Cascade clerk and recorder by a margin of less than 50 votes last fall. She previously cited the closure of a mail-sorting business and a lack of staffing as obstacles her office faces.

Current county commissioner James Larson told MTPR the commission is monitoring Merchant and the elections office and that they can’t “tell her what to do.”

“We’ve offered our help,” Larson said. “Have not been taken up on any of that.”

The newly formed citizens’ group is also concerned about election supervisor Devereaux Biddick’s employment in the office. MTPR obtained images of a public petition signed by Biddick in 2022 calling for county commissioners to ban the use of electronic vote-counting machines and require all county residents to re-register to vote in the name of preventing election fraud.

Merchant and Biddick did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.

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