Voters wait to testify in Brannon election trial

COEUR d’ALENE — The total number of absentee ballots counted during the Nov. 3 general election is 2,051, Kootenai County Elections Department staff testified Tuesday.

The numbers on other received absentee ballot reports, — 2,047 or 2,049 — are printed reports from a real time electronic state database and shouldn’t be considered the final count, they said during the second day of the election challenge trial involving City Council Seat 2 challenger Jim Brannon and incumbent Mike Kennedy.

“Two-thousand-fifty-one is the number of ballots counted by the machine,” said Susan Smith, Kootenai County Elections Department clerk. “The other report is purely an in-house report that changes every minute of every day.”

The difference in numbers has been the focus of the first two days of trial. None of the alleged 21 illegal voters testified Tuesday, but the difference in the final ballot count adopted by the city of Coeur d’Alene and the number of absentee ballots according to other reports played center stage the second day in a row.

The reports that show numbers of absentee ballots the elections department received other than 2,051 were run by the office on Nov. 6, 16, and 24. None match the 2,051 total the machines tabulated after the polls closed.

That’s because those reports were from the Secretary of State’s electronic real-time tracker of registered voters in an area, Smith said, and shouldn’t be used as a direct comparison.

Real time means that the list of voters is constantly updating. Therefore, people who voted absentee in the allowed time between Sept. 15 and Nov. 3 but have since moved or passed away would no longer be on those reports when they were printed later in November, Smith said.

“It’s not the same as a list I would run today,” she said.

The day began with Kootenai County Clerk Dan English resuming his testimony until the afternoon, after which Smith testified. Smith’s testimony will be called back to the stand later. Only three witnesses have been called in two days, none of whom were the 21 voters.

Both sides did discuss why there wasn’t documentation for the 53 voters who lived in split precincts as to which ballot they actually received. Split precincts allow both county and city residents to vote there in their respective elections.

English said bar codes that would have been in those split precinct polls were prepared before election day for those who already registered.

Bar codes scan and identify which ballot those voters should have received, but couldn’t be done at the polls on election day since it was already prepared. Likely those 53 came in on election day for their ballot, and poll workers gave them the correct ballot at the time once they verified where they lived, he said.

But Brannon’s attorney Starr Kelso said two reported county residents at the time of the election, Rahana Zellars and Dustin Ainsworth, were listed as having voted in city precincts. That discussion ended as neither voter has testified yet.

The trial is scheduled to run through Thursday, but many witnesses have yet to be called. They have showed up to testify, but have left their phone numbers with counsel to be contacted when they’re needed and left before the day concluded.

“We’re two days into the trial,” said 1st District Judge Charles Hosack at the end of the daylong hearing. “I’m beginning to get concerned about the pace.”