Local election officials in Butte Tuesday completed a full recount of June’s primary election. A district court judge ordered the county to review the count after it came to light that more than a thousand absentee ballots had accidentally been counted twice.
Tuesday’s recount did not change the outcome in any race for the state Legislature or statewide office in June’s primary.
Butte-Silver Bow Election Clerk Linda Sajor-Joyce said her office did an internal audit after seeing that more votes were counted than ballots submitted.
Sajor-Joyce said in court documents human error led to the initial incorrect count. Election workers accidentally counted about eleven hundred votes — about 10 percent of total – twice.
After doing a hand count of ballots Monday, election workers ran every ballot through a vote counting machine.
Republican and Democrat state lawmakers observed the recount. They were there as part of a state senate special committee tasked with investigating the cause of the counting error.
Committee members declined to comment on the recount.
