Bannock County takes closer look at special elections

The particularly low voter turnout during this past Tuesday’s special May 2017 election drew concerns from not only Bannock County officials, but some voters as well.

New candidate Kert Howard was running for a seat for the District 25 school board, but ended up 26 votes shy of his opponent and incumbent, Janie Gebhardt.

He said he received a call from a voter who said they showed up to vote at their polling place located at the Bannock County landfill facility, but the gates had been closed by five o’clock that night.

“I know there was no malicious intent,” Howard said. “I know the employees are probably used to leaving everyday and locking the gate behind them, but the problem is that we then had an open poll behind a closed gate.”

County Clerk Robert Poleki said the county received a call from a voter who noticed the gate was closed between 10 and 15 minutes.

He said they contacted someone at the polling place who immediately opened the gate back up. He said they called that person back to the polls where they were then able to vote.

“We do apologize and we corrected the procedure right away,” Poleki said, adding there are some new staff members at that facility who might not have known the polls were open until eight o’clock that night.

Howard said, it’s hard enough getting people out to vote for special elections, particularly when there aren’t any pressing issues the public is voting on.

Poleki agreed about the low voter turnout rate for special elections, saying that polling precinct only received 124 total votes that day. Countywide – 1,700 votes.

“We actually had two precincts with zero votes and one precinct with only one vote,” Poleki added.

This means, the county staffs some polling places with anywhere between two and four staff members, who are there for 12 hours on those election days – and some of them, never see anybody walk through those doors.

Well, except for Poleki.

“When I go around to these precincts and check up on how they’re doing that day, they’re usually happy to see me because they haven’t seen anyone all day,” Poleki joked.

He said the county spends roughly $55,000 to run these special elections, which means the county spent roughly $30 per ballot this time around.

Both he and Howard agree, it’s better to combine these special elections to see a healthier voter turnout number.

“I think we do need to combine elections since we spend so much money on these elections and have low turnouts. So, if we could consolidate elections, that would be great for taxpayers,” Poleki said.

He said, the the smartest solution for now is to work toward this concept of consolidation in order to save taxpayers time and money.

“We can keep having up to four to five elections each year, or maybe we could just have two and get everything done.”