A Montana county declared the wrong winner in a race after overcounting votes.
During a post-canvassing audit of the Butte-Silver Bow County primary that was held in June, election officials suspected an overcount of more than 1,000 ballots, prompting a judge to order a recount. The recount discovered that 1,131 more votes were counted than voters who voted. Data shows a very similar number of votes in each precinct was overcounted.
Election officials are not entirely sure what happened, though Butte-Silver Bow County Clerk and Recorder Linda Sajor-Joyce told leaders she believes the extra ballots were from sample data that had not been cleared from the software by Election Day, according to KTVH. In total, Sajor-Joyce could not explain 11 of the overcounted votes, according to NBC Montana.
As a result of the discrepancy, officials declared the wrong winner in a Republican precinct committeeman race and declared the wrong candidate to be the frontrunner in the race for county attorney general.
Officials say the incident underscores the need for a way to catch such an issue earlier, according to KTVH.
But Republicans who have proposed methods to reconcile the number of votes counted with the number of voters who voted have run into opposition from Democrats, as is the case in Georgia.
The Georgia State Election Board (SEB) recently approved Rule 183-1-12-.12, which requires precincts to ensure the number of votes counted equals the number of ballots cast. The rule requires that the “hand count ballot totals” match the
