Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
Love Lives Here scored half a victory last night when the Whitefish City Council passed a feel-good resolution affirming it’s displeasure with discrimination and enthusiasm for human rights. Running Richard Spencer out of town was the preference of some associated with or sympathetic to LLH, so the resolution amounted to half-a-loaf and a politically workable means of quenching a fire that would not have been ignited by less fearful people. LLH is a group in transition, so perhaps it will adopt a less confrontational approach to issues in the future.
In Senate District 49, Republican Richard Haines, who lost to Democrat Diane Sands by 31 votes, a margin of 0.4 percent, has posted a $2,637 bond to have the ballots recounted. Unless there’s a systemic error, his odds of prevailing are very, very low. But there’s no reason to begrudge his decision to avail himself of his right to a recount. Missoulian’s story.
In House District 94, which sprawls north of Missoula (map), conservative Gary Marbut, running as an Independent, lost to Democrat Kimberley Dudik by 48 votes, a 1.4 percent margin that’s too big to qualify for a recount (the upper bound is one-half-percent). So he filed a lawsuit in district court alleging that the Dudik 129/Marbut 63 breakdown of 192 ballots counted by resolution boards is so improbable statistically that:
Marbut wants a judge to order a recount of the 192 ballots, and, subject to their examination, “asks that it be determined by the Court that Kimberly Dudik was not elected and the election was void or that Plaintiff Gary Marbut was elected, or, in the alternative, to order a special election.”
It’s an interesting exercise in bootstrapping, but the statistics cited in the Missoulian’s report appear to be based on some questionable assumptions. The 192 ballots, all absentee ballots, are not a random sample of the absentee ballots cast. Improbability is not proof of an inaccurate count. And if all 192 ballots came from the heavily pro-Dudik Lowell precinct, the Dudik:Marbut ratio would be far from improbable.
I suspect Marbut wants the court to order a recount of the 192 ballots so that he can challenge individual ballots. Think Gore v. Bush in Florida in 2000. Unless he can prove to the court that Missoula County bungled the count in a way that places the outcome of election in doubt, I think Marbut’s lawsuit is a very long shot. Missoulian’s story.
