JEROME COUNTY, Idaho — The elections tagline, “every vote counts,” is embedded in our collective consciousness and Jerome County is seeing that firsthand. In the Valley School District, the zone 4 Trustee election finished 48 to 47. While examining the election results, the Jerome County Clerk found that two voters, a couple from the same household, were incorrectly issued an absentee ballot for Trustee Zone 5, but the voters reside in Zone 4. Those two votes could totally change the election.
“Now, what they're going to do is they're seeking judicial review,” said Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane.
Secretary McGrane is working with Jerome County and the courts to utilize a law passed in 2022. The judicial review of election results, a law McGrane is very familiar with.
“After some elections I went through at Ada County, we actually got this law passed to allow, rather than requiring a candidate to challenge an election or a voter to contest it, this allows the clerk to actually go to the court," McGrane said. "And just as an open book say, here's what happened, here's what took place. Can the court look at this and determine whether this mistake would have impacted the outcome of the election.”
This is the very first time the judicial review of elections law is being used.
“I was very active in getting this in place because we had seen issues in the past where we wanted a court to look at our work and be able to review it. But there was no legal mechanism to do that other than someone contesting it,” McGrane said. “This will actually be the first test of going before a judge, sharing all the information, allowing anybody who's been involved. So the candidates, any other interested party to see what took place. And then I think likely in this case, we may be headed towards doing a new election.”
So, how will this all play out? McGrane said there are a lot of considerations.
“That is still being figured out. I think one of the interesting things in this particular case is we do have two runoff elections coming up on December 5th, both in Eagle and in Mountain Home. I think there's an interest to try and align this. Now, there's a big question of whether this will go through the court proceeding fast enough to make that happen,” McGrane said. “I also think one of the determinations in this process is not just how close the election was or what happened during that process, but any time you are asked to redo an election, there's no way to create the same circumstances. There's no way to get all of the same voters to show up. So it's always going to be an imperfect solution to whatever came up. And I think that's one of the challenges the court will have to work out here as well.”
Elections are human run and that will leave room for human error. Catching mistakes is an important part of the process.
“I think being able to show some light on it. One of the greatest things of this review is we get to just let everybody see what's happening on the inside. And I think that's really important in terms of building trust in our elections,” McGrane said. “They are scrutinizing to such a level that they can make determinations like this, of course, And I can assure you the county wishes they'd just gotten it right the first time. I'm sure the candidates do as well. But we want to make sure that we do get it right. And so this gives a chance for them to try and make sure the records were corrected.”
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