Waitsburg Elections are Underway

WAITSBURG – It’s no joke. Waitsburg’s annual elections, which take place the first Monday in April, will be held on April Fool’s Day this year. Caucuses may be held Feb. 25 – March 7 and Declarations of Candidacy must be filed with the City between March 1 and March 10. Declaration of Candidacy forms can be picked up at City Hall or downloaded from the City website at http://www.cityofwaitsburg.com.

Waitsburg operates under its “one-of-a-kind” original 1881 charter, which means the City election process for mayor and five council members differs slightly from the rest of the state.

While most elected offices in the state carry four-year terms, Waitsburg City officials are elected, or re-elected, each year. Those elections are held in April as opposed to the State’s general election which takes place in November.

Another difference is the fact that the election process, which includes developing and mailing the ballot and tallying the votes is handled by City Hall staff, rather than the county election department.

Historically, the Waitsburg Commercial Club sponsored a caucus with the purpose of producing a slate of candidates for that year’s ballot. In recent years, the City added a secondary option. A Declaration of Candidacy allows an individual run independently, without being associated with a caucus.

The last elected caucus slate was the Truth & Trust slate which was first elected in 2010. That slate included Walt Gobel, Orville Branson, Marty Dunn, Kevin House, Karl Newell and Scott Nettles. The slate was elected for the final time in 2013, with Orville Branson having retired in 2012 to be replaced by K.C. Kuykendall. In 2014, Debra Callahan ran independently and replaced Nettles to break up the Truth & Trust slate. Candidates have filed independently since.

Until 2006, votes were cast in person at a polling location such as Town Hall. Today, all votes are cast via mail-in ballots. According to City Manager Randy Hinchliffe, the last polling place election resulted in only 80 ballots cast as opposed to the 2017 election where there were 323 mail-in votes tallied in 2017 and 222 in 2018.

Declarations of Candidacy are accepted at City Hall through the first 10 days of March. With a full slate of candidates, ballots are typically mailed out two weeks prior to the election. If a full slate of candidates is not filed, as in 2017, the process reopens with the election delayed until the third Monday in April.