Rural Fire District candidates agree to disagree
By Eric Valentine
Neither man is ready to concede, but both incumbent Jed Gray and challenger Gray Ottley have now conceded that the November election for Ketchum Rural Fire District commissioner will need to be sorted out by the courts. As the tally stands now, Gray leads Ottley by—literally—just one vote.
The incumbent originally said he was shocked his challenger took the matter to the courts, since their face-to-face meeting right after the election felt like Ottley conceded. But Gray says now he sees the need for further review.
“I’ve been researching this as best I can with the holidays, but there’s more than just one anomaly than the six people who received the wrong ballots,” Gray said.
For Ottley, bringing those six folks in to cast their vote in a judge’s closed chambers would suffice. It’s a little more complicated than that because those six voters should have been voting in a different election. They are extra votes, not uncounted ones.
“Deduct those votes from the tally of 228-227 and declare once and for all a clear winner,” explained Ottley. “I definitely could live with that, and my supporters, too. The voters have a right to know.”
According to Gray, there could be several more voters who were not counted due to additional boundary line issues. Gray also said that one person has claimed to him they voted twice.
“I think the proper thing to do is ask for a new election,” Gray said.
It’s not entirely clear what has caused so much gray area, but the incumbent commissioner said much of the confusion has to do with this being the first time Blaine County has run a Ketchum Rural Fire District election. For 20-plus years, commissioners have run unopposed, meaning they’d only have to garner a handful of signatures from tax-district voters and have the county sign off on it. Coupled with a recent state law change requiring counties to manage all tax-district elections, coordinating who should vote on what is not as straightforward as it seems.
“It’s a learning process for all of us here,” Gray said.