Won’t honor election without all votes
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Editor,
The last few weeks you’ve read newspaper articles, heard radio announcements and a lot of rumors about the recent Flathead Joint Board of Control election. Contrary to what you hear, the FJBC won’t honor this election until “all” irrigators get a ballot. There are about 2,500 irrigators, 658 of those irrigators did not receive a ballot. That’s about 33 percent of irrigators who did not receive a ballot; 529 in the Flathead District, 29 in the Camas area alone. Ask yourself, how many irrigators total in Camas area? The Mission District had 110 irrigators who did not receive a ballot. Over 17,000 acres of irrigated land had no vote. This is totally unacceptable to this FJBC board. Lake County was hired by the FJBC to run this election. When you are hired to do a job, you’re accountable to the people who hired you. Lake County election office and the County Attorney are responsible to run an election according to all applicable State laws. You just can’t take one law and change the way elections were run for 40 years, without proper notification and paperwork. Ask yourself also why Lake County’s Attorney office was sending interoffice communications to the leader of the pro-compact group and not to the FJBC who hired the County to do a job? Also the elections office told people who witnessed the vote counting that there was to be one pro-compact and one anti-compact witness at the vote counting. FJBC commissioner elections have nothing to do with the CSKT compact. District elections are to choose competent Commissioners to represent the Irrigation Districts in District business.
It might be that Missoula and Sanders County might be needed to help administer a fair and legal election, where all Irrigators receive ballots and the paperwork to file the ballots in the time frame the law requires. Lake County’s present elections office and County Attorney seem to be incompetent to do this job at this time. Our job is to represent the Districts, and make sure you have a vote. Keep tuned.
Tim Orr
St. Ignatius
