I asked Mike Kennedy for a break down on the cost of the Jim Brannon election challenge and received this from him via email: "In my educated estimation, if you count hard costs to lawyers, the costs that I paid myself and through donations (approximately $10K not including time and lost productivity), then you add the city and county staff time, and the continuing lawyers time (for the appeal to the Supreme Court) I think it will cost the "defending" side of city and county alone well more than a quarter million dollars. Yes, $250,000 in taxpayer money to find out what was known all along - that there are human errors in elections and sometimes people vote incorrectly despite everyone's best efforts. The difference now is that even after the most vetted election in Idaho history, new Clerk Hayes oversaw an election with more errors, and the same kind of absentee ballot envelope "mystery" that his supporters, city opponents, and campaign advocates saw fit to assassinate Dan English's character over.  And yet you hear no criticism at all. More below.

Dan English is owed an apology by the people who shredded him, and Jim Brannon should reimburse the taxpayers a few hundred thousand dollars.  I'm not going to wait by the phone for either of those outcomes, though.

The final result after all that microscopic search for a "smoking gun" was three votes tossed (two for me, one for Brannon) which left a 3 vote victory, down from 5 votes on election day.  Amazing.