A recall election seeking to remove two of the five board members for the Sanders County Sewer District in Montana is being held on Aug. 24. Board President Sunny Chase and board member Rick McCollum are on the ballot.
The recall effort was started by a group of residents who opposed putting a sewer system in Paradise, Montana. The board voted in favor of the sewer project in May 2020. The town received a $3.5 million grant to help cover the cost of the project and took out a loan of $770,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development to cover the rest of the cost.
In reaction to the recall effort, Chase said the board had gone through the process of putting in a sewer system in good faith. She said she saw it as a necessity for the town.
To get the recall on the ballot, supporters had to submit signatures equal to 15% of registered voters in the town of Paradise. The petitions were submitted with 43 signatures, which was over the threshold. The Sanders County Clerk and Recorder’s Office verified the signatures, allowing the recall election to be scheduled.
In the first half of 2021, Ballotpedia tracked 164 recall efforts against 262 officials. This was the most recall efforts for this point in the year since the first half of 2016, when we tracked 189 recall efforts against 265 officials. In comparison, we tracked between 72 and 155 efforts by the midpoints of 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
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