Montrose runs its city elections through Montrose County. Under the agreement between the two governments, ballots are counted on tabulation equipment the county clerk provides, at the county's election facility, and the city has no ballot-counting machines of its own. But on election night in April, the last 83 ballots never went through those machines. City Clerk Lisa DelPiccolo and three election judges counted those by hand at City Hall instead. The county asked for the ballots more than once, the city declined, and the election was certified.
In August, a columnist for the online Montrose Mirror — David White, a former Montrose mayor and county commissioner — called that a breach of contract and a compromised election. DelPiccolo had already answered for the situation at an Aug. 3 council work session, saying there were questions about the county elections office and whether certain staff members were impartial, and that she had decided to count the ballots herself. "So I stand behind what I did 100%," she said.
That was the entire public explanation for four weeks. On Aug. 26 the mayor called a special council meeting to get legal advice about investigating the election. The meeting quickly turned contentious. He moved to remove the city manager and his staff from the room, and the city attorney told council, "My client is not city council. My client is the city of Montrose as a whole." City Manager Bill Bell asked whether council really meant to discuss his employees without him present. The mayor answered, "Yeah." Bell told them that if a majority wanted it, "I think that's a really bad decision for you to do that, but you can go ahead and do it." Council voted 3-2 to continue behind closed doors in executive session.
On Aug. 31 the city posted a page of answers about the election. In it is the explanation many in the community had been seeking as to why City Clerk Lisa DelPiccolo would question the partiality of the County Clerk's office. The city's answer is that on election night, observers including two candidates were in the room while ballots were being scanned at the county, and the city clerk — the city's designated election official — wasn't notified. The other eight candidates, the city says, "were not given the same opportunity to be present." So the clerk moved the final count to City Hall, to what the city calls "an environment under her control."
The city also says hand-counting that last "remnant batch" is routine. It's held back on election night so late ballots can be added, and so a batch of one or two can't reveal how somebody voted. What the city doesn't address is what (according to correspondence David White received from a CORA request he made) the county kept asking about — that those ballots were never run through the county's machines at all.
The City's statement, released on Monday, states "all five members of the Montrose City Council agree", saying they're confident in the results and that the clerk administered the election with "rigorous neutrality." The council also wants changes, including a room where every candidate is invited to wait for results on election night.
No one has claimed the outcome changed. In the closest race, Michael Badagliacco won District I by 31 certified votes, and the hand-counted ballots widened his lead rather than closing it.
The city has not said who the two candidates were that were present in the County Clerk's office while ballots were being scanned. Montrose County Clerk Tressa Guynes has never publicly answered the suggestion that her staff weren't impartial, and had not returned KVNF's message as of our press deadline.