CPRC files lawsuit in Missoula County to help ensure transparency in future elections
Transparency in elections is important. No one alleges that vote fraud altered any election results in Montana in 2020. But two different recounts of the envelopes used in the 2020 vote in Missoula County came up with two very different results.
January 4, a recount of the 2020 election in Missoula made nationalnews when it found 4,592 fewer envelopes than the County Election Office’s tally of 72,491 votes. That is a 6.33 percent difference in votes counted. The county’s election was entirely mail-in, and envelopes were crucial for checking dates and signatures.
During that recount, the Missoula County election board provided 31 boxesof envelopes to be counted. On March 28, in a count commissioned by the Missoula County Republicans, the count resulted in only 71 fewer envelopes than votes.
Why the difference? For the March 28 count, the election board provided 33 boxes — two more than were provided in the first count (affidavits available here, here, and here).
With a total of 67,899 envelopes in the January 4 recount, having them in 31 boxes would imply an average of 2,200 envelopes per box. Throw in two missing boxes, and you come remarkably close to the original difference of 4,592 envelopes and the remaining difference of 71 envelopes.
If the video of the November 3, 2020 vote count had been retained as required under federal law for any federal election, it would be easy to watch the opening of the envelopes during the original count and see how many envelopes were opened. To ensure this problem won’t occur again, Dr. John Lott agreed to be the plaintiff in a lawsuit to make the Missoula County Elections Office follow Federal law. This is only an issue of election transparency. A copy of the lawsuit is available here.
