Boulder Mayor Rusty Giulio and City Council President Drew Dawson will each be reelected to new four-year terms after running unopposed in this year’s election—and because they are unopposed, the elections did not appear on this year’s ballot.
Pat Lewis and Stacie St. Clair are vying for the council seat currently held by Sherry Lepley, who is not running for reelection. Lepley represents Boulder’s second ward, which covers the half of town west of Main Street, and registered voters in that ward received ballots allowing them to vote in that election.
But in ward one, east of Main Street, voters didn’t receive ballots this year. That’s because, in Montana, a municipality can cancel an election in which a candidate is running unopposed, according to Boulder City Clerk Ellen Harne and Jefferson County Clerk and Recorder Ginger Kunz. That also meant that ballots mailed to residents in ward two showed only the race between Lewis and St. Clair.
In response to questions from The Monitor and city voters about the absence of uncontested races from ballots, and about ward-one voters not receiving ballots, Harne contacted Kunz to better understand how, exactly, municipalities can cancel uncontested races, she said. The city contracts with the county to administer its elections, so Kunz and her office are responsible for distributing and tallying Boulder’s ballots.
When contacted by Harne, Kunz said, she did some research and found the state laws that allow cancelation of uncontested elections. Title 13, Chapter 1, Part 4 of Montana Code states that municipalities may cancel elections “if the number of candidates filing for election is equal to or less than the number of positions to be filled,” but that the governing body—in this case the Boulder City Council—must pass a resolution cancelling the races and declare the unopposed candidates “elected to the position by acclamation.”
On Oct. 21, one day after The Monitor’s questions to Harne and Kunz, the city of Boulder scheduled a special meeting for this Thursday, Oct. 28, at 6:30 p.m., at which the City Council will consider a resolution to cancel the elections for mayor and the ward-one council seat, and to declare Giulio and Dawson elected by acclamation.
Boulder is governed by a mayor and four council members—two each representing the city’s two wards. The mayor and council members all serve four-year terms, with the terms of council members in the same ward offset from each other by two years. Gyle Nix was elected in ward one in 2019 and will be up for reelection in 2023. Bear Taylor was elected in ward two in 2019 and will also be up for reelection in 2023.
