Tower city clerk faces post election disipline
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2018 — Tower, Minnesota has been in the Minnesota Arrowhead spotlight since City Clerk Linda Keith in her role as Head Election Judge botched the state’s August 14 primary election. Citizen complaints to the St. Louis County initiated an investigation into the primary election and ultimately found seven clear election violations that resulted in 25 Precinct Two ballots given to Precinct One voters, causing the ballots to be removed from the ballot box and invalidated. There are no residents who live in, or vote from Precinct Two in the city and those ballots should have been set aside rather than given to Precinct One voters.
St. Louis County Auditor Donald Dicklich lays responsibility for all elections on the Tower City Council. An August 26 issue of the Duluth News-Tribune article detailing some of Tower’s election problems quotes Dicklich:
“We’ve followed up on the situation. We’ve done the additional training and we expect that the City Council and mayor will have made their feelings known to the clerk. I don’t know that, but it’s their responsibility and we trust that things will be much better in the general election.While St. Louis County officials want to lay full blame for the botched election on the city council the county was clearly been forewarned that there were potential election problems in Tower. The Lake Vermilion area saw many people question the training skill levels of local governments following multiple attempts by a local Lake Vermilion township to conduct a recount of its March election. Following the November 8, 2016 general election the county was also received citizen complaints that questioned the validity of that election. For over 18 months city minutes never reflected if election ballots were ever canvased and letters sent to the city clerk, by St. Louis County, never saw the light of day as correspondence on the Tower City Council agenda. Then, without explanation or any city council action, one night early this spring, the minutes, as published on the internet, changed to include a report on the canvasing of ballots.”
While St. Louis County officials want to lay full blame for the botched election on the city the county was clearly forewarned that there were potential election problems in Tower. The Lake Vermilion area saw many people question the training skill levels of local governments following multiple attempts by a local Lake Vermilion township to conduct a recount of its March election. Following the November 8, 2016 general election the county also received citizen complaints that questioned the validity of that Tower election. For over 18 months city minutes never reflected that election ballots were canvassed and letters sent to the city, by St. Louis County, never saw the light of day as Correspondence on the Tower City Council agenda. Then, without explanation, or any city council action, one night early this spring, the minutes, as published on the city’s website, changed to include a report on the canvassing of ballots.
Being unsure if the city council was even aware of 2016 election complaints and correspondence between the county and the city, mayoral candidate Jeff Hill presented Acting Mayor Kevin Fitton with copies of the county’s correspondence to the city and documentation of the surreptitiously amended minutes immediately prior to the September meeting.
The Tower City Council finally decided to address the city clerk’s role in the current election issues in a closed session at its regularly scheduled meeting held Wednesday, September 26. It is not known if Fitton ever shared the complaints regarding the 2016 election with the rest of the city council or if these issues were also discussed in the closed session.
Alderman Lance Dougherty said that one issue which has him concerned is that the city clerk has not accepted blame for the election failures and instead has attempted to shift blame to others.
Mayor Josh Carlson announced that he was closing the meeting because the city council was going to discuss the details of the county’s complaints and the city clerk’s role in the primary election failures in Tower. Because the council would be directly discussing the actions of its employee and determining if any discipline was warranted he was compelled, by statute, to close the meeting.