Clark Fork Voters Make Casting Ballots A Community Event

Since 1968, Clark Fork resident Shirley Erickson has brought her crocheted tablecloth to City Hall to work on during the lulls between voters on Election Day.

This year she was so busy there wasn’t time to take it out of the bag. And there was no time for anyone to eat lunch before the food got cold.

This year, Election Day started at dawn when Bill Harp, Clark Fork’s official maintenance man, hung the flag at City Hall. Voters gathered on the narrow sidewalk. Chief Judge Bev Shields administered an oath to the seven other women who agreed to perform the sacred duties of the Election Board and “prevent the violation of any provision of law in conducting the election.” Finally, on the dot of eight o’clock on Nov. 5th, the door to Clark Fork’s City Hall opened. Fifteen people entered. Despite the time spent blowing on their hands and stamping their feet against the cold, they were in a jovial mood.

“I came early to avoid the rush,” said one, and the early voters indeed set the pace for the rest of the day.

During the next 12 hours, as one member of the eight-person Election Board said: “There was no time to breathe.”

By law, the Election Board is required to furnish a booth. But, also by law, the voter doesn’t have to use it. The wait was so long for the four metal frame booths with canvas covers that several people chose to vote on a folding chair beside the coffee pot, finding other nooks and crannies and, occasionally, seeking out that most private room in the small 18-by-30 concrete block building.

By 11 a.m., with voters winding through the narrow strip left in the center of the room, the board was at a loss to find space to cram in another booth.

Election Day was “like a social gathering” said one voter. Many old friends and relatives exchanged pleasantries with newer neighbors.

The residents of Clark Fork precinct showed up in record numbers. There was Charlie Campbell, who has not missed an election in seventy years; Bluefingers, who has cast ballots for more than fifty years; and first-time voters, Matt Lamburth and Misty Engstrom, who made a special trip home from North Idaho College. One-month-old Marcus Franck accompanied his mother to City Hall, to the delight of Shirley Crawford, ballot box judge, who held him while his mother voted.

“All day long I felt like an answering machine for the Election Board,” said Postmaster Pat Derr.

She sent people next door to City Hall to take advantage of the 1995 law that allows people to register and vote on the same day, providing they can prove their residence with a driver’s license, a bill from the power company, or know a local registered voter willing to vouch for them. At five minutes to eight in the evening, with the door about to close, someone rushed in to register. It was no problem that the necessary paperwork had been forgotten. Such is the familiarity of a small town that someone in the room could sign the necessary affidavit and another voice could be heard.

“I never remember being this busy,” said Shields, who started with the board when she was 21 and has been helping with elections “for more years than I can remember.”

With the door closed, the Election Board heaved a sigh of relief. Rather than counting ballots, which in 1994 was a task that lasted until 2 in the morning, this year a new computerized counting machine at the courthouse did the job.

Shields, with her son Tom at the wheel, and accompanied by another member of the Election Board, drove the locked ballot box to Sandpoint. Marie Scott, County Clerk - incidentally a resident of Clark Fork - and her assistants spent the night attending the new machine.

By 6:30 the next morning, votes from all 30 precincts in Bonner County had been counted. The breakdown for each precinct, including number five which is Clark Fork, is not expected for another week.

By the time Erickson announced the final call into the night: “Polling booths are closed,” and Alice Sutton and Tom Shields took down the flag, 485 local and 67 absentee ballots had been cast, 63 people had registered. And only 83 blank ballots remained. The people of Clark Fork precinct should be proud that more than 82 percent of their registered voters cast ballots and set a record in a year that had the lowest national turnout since 1924.

, DataTimes