A 29-year-old hothead, a wannabe Tea Party politician named Scott Aspenlieder (pronounced Aspen-lighter), was caught in the embarrasing position of being on the wrong side of the facts this week. Scott launched an angry tirade accusing Secretary Linda McCulloch of being behind a Broadwater County precinct’s ballot glitch.

However, the Great Falls Tribune reported hat Scott is wrong:

Broadwater County election officer Rhonda Nelson said the error on the 11th precinct ballot was between her office and the private contractor who printed and mailed the ballots.

“There was no state involvement in this error,” Nelson said. “There was nothing that the state should have done or could have done differently. The error was entirely between the software company and my office.”

Scott  refused to acknowledge he’d gotten it wrong, which shows he doesn’t even know how the office he’s running for works.  County election officers are responsible for printing ballots.

Scott began his campaign by insulting teachers. He declared that Linda McCulloch, the current Secretary of State (SOS), is a “lifelong bureaucrat” and for that reason is not qualified to be SOS. McCulloch is a lifelong teacher, so Aspenlieder has now brought the national GOP war on teachers to Montana, by calling teachers “bureaucrats.”

Scott opposes mail ballots–perhaps because the allow more people to vote.  In voicing his opposition to the practice he even insulted rural communities. He railed on a vote-by-mail proposal that McCulloch voiced support for (she supported it because it would have saved the state two million dollars annually.)

Scott stated that:

“voting is about all these rural communities have left.”

In other words, Scott  thinks rural folk need the diversion thay a trip to the polls provides, since they have nothing else in their lives.

The glitch impacted 125 ballots.  All the voters are being notified by phone of the error and sent new ballots.