The Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribe will hold its primary election for the Tribal Council on Saturday, and then 10 days later folks in Polson, Ronan, St. Ignatius will hold their city elections.

Polson promises to have one of the most contested elections in the county, with incumbent Mayor Lou being challenged by former Mayor Pat Devries.

"There needs to be more community involvement in the city decision making process, and the council needs to make their decisions in and open format" Devries explained. "Continuity is the most important thing as the city progress in a relative new form of government" commented Marchello.

Another big race in the city is Ward 2, where Murat Kalinyaprak a frequent critic of the present city government process, is challenging incumbent Mike Lies who is a long-time advocate of the status quo approach. 

This year CSKT will post unofficial election results on Saturday evening on a pair of web sties. The Tribe's Rob McDonald says the Saturday results will not include Absentee and Contested ballots. The official results will be released Wednesday, once the Absentee and Contested ballots are added to the unofficial election results.

The results for both Saturday and Wednesday will be posted in two places, the official tribal site, www.cskt.org and the tribal newspaper site, www.charkoosta.com.

- Dean Hermes reporting for kpax.com