but now there’s some intrigue.<\/p>\n
Surrey’s school district is in parts of two counties, Ward and McHenry. Locals tell me that some of the district’s voters from McHenry County didn’t have the bond question on their ballot. I confirmed this with Secretary of State Michael Howe.<\/p>\n
“It’s not a proud moment in election administration,” he said.<\/p>\n
Each ballot given to a voter covers a variety of jurisdictions. There are the national and statewide races, of course, but also smaller political subdivisions like counties, cities and school districts. Ballots must be customized to reflect the matrix of jurisdictions a given voter falls into. These are done using what Howe described as street segments. Each segment has a group of residential addresses that dictate which ballot a voter receives.<\/p>\n
These segments are entered manually. There was an error in adding a new street segment to the Surrey School District for the 2026 election cycle. Howe told me that the counties handle the entry of these segments, and that there are nine voters living on this segment. Two of them cast ballots. Those two did not have the bond question on their ballots, and they should have.<\/p>\n
There were a total of 782 votes cast in the election, of which 49 came from McHenry County, per the unofficial results posted on the Secretary of State’s elections website.<\/p>\n
Howe said he has spoken to the business manager at the Surrey School District, as well as officials in McHenry County.<\/p>\n
What happens next? A recount is out of the question. Though the bond measure fell just a handful of votes short of passing, state law uses the difference between the “yes” and “no” votes as the threshold for triggering recounts, and the distance between those positions in this election was actually quite large.<\/p>\n
Howe said there is <\/p>\n
a process spelled out in section 16.1-16 of the North Dakota Century Code<\/a><\/p>\n for contesting the election. The results of the election will be officially certified by the canvassing board on Nov. 16, after which there is a five-day window for the results to be contested. The law allows “erroneous” voting as valid grounds for a contest, and the matter would go before a judge.<\/p>\n Here, the law gets somewhat murky, as it’s written more for contests between candidates and not over the results of a ballot question. The judge is allowed to vacate the results of the election, but the law provides no specific provision for ordering a new election. Rather, the law states that a vacancy will have occurred, thus kicking into effect the laws governing the filling of a vacancy in public office.<\/p>\n But vacating the results of a bond election would not create a vacancy in an elected office. It would only nullify the results, leaving us right where we started with the bond issue defeated. Undoubtedly cold comfort to the proponents of a yes vote. And even if the law provided the judge with the option of calling a special election, state law prohibits school bonds from being decided anywhere but the June or November ballots in election years.<\/p>\n Again, the bond failed by five votes. Only two people from this overlooked street segment cast their ballots. Even if we assume that both would have voted for the bond, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome. Though is it possible that some of the other voters on this segment might have been inspired to vote if they knew they could cast a ballot on the bond question?<\/p>\n It’s not an answerable question.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Rob Port is a news reporter, columnist, and podcast host for the Forum News Service with an extensive background in investigations and public records. He covers politics and government in North Dakota and the upper Midwest. Reach him at rport@forumcomm.com. Click here<\/a> to subscribe to his Plain Talk podcast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MINOT \u2014 Surrey is a small community just to the east of Minot. On the ballot this week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":963170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,328842,328129,328843,328844,87674,328845,328130,328846],"class_list":["post-963169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mchenry-county","tag-michael-howe","tag-north-dakota-elections-2026","tag-north-dakota-secretary-of-state","tag-surrey","tag-surrey-north-dakota","tag-surrey-school-bond","tag-ward-county-elections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=963169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/963170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=963169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=963169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=963169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Rob](\"https:\/\/cdn.forumcomm.com\/dims4\/default\/5b46d5e\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/1231x1231+0+0\/resize\/100x100!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fforum-communications-production-web.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F25%2F01%2F25ba47f242d09f5a10695dcc24fa%2F472427420-10161594750918218-8652588357099553436-n.jpg\")
<\/p>\n