Montana Secretary of State Corey Stapleton stopped in Kalispell to meet with local business owners on Wednesday.

Over a lunch at Brannigan’s Irish Pub in downtown Kalispell, Stapleton updated approximately two dozen people in attendance about what he’s accomplished over his first year in office. He touted a leaner workforce and sweeping transitions to all digital processing of business registration documents. He also talked about the nuances of running elections in Montana.

He said that when he came into office, it was his interpretation that the workforce was demoralized and struggling to keep up with the burdens of the office. He said he has been trying to refocus on customer service by cutting down on call wait times and processing applications more quickly.

To accomplish that, he had to let some workers go and hire some new ones. He also moved out of a separate building the office occupied across the street from the state Capitol to cut costs.

He said it was not easy to transition to processing all business registration paperwork digitally, and they field a lot of calls from older business owners who need to be walked through the process. He also said it saves a lot of processing time and cuts down on errors in submitted paperwork, which over time will save money and make things easier for state residents.

He also took time to extol the virtues of big data, and said his office had contacted everyone who submitted a ballot that someone else had signed in the special election. Though two thirds of those polled didn’t respond, the responses he did get showed some interesting results. He found that only a small percentage of those that did respond were spouses signing for their spouse, which was not what his office was expecting.

Toward the end of the talk, Stapleton said he thought blaming the younger generation for being anything other than upstanding citizens was poor practice. Any misbehavior by those entering the workforce should be viewed as a failing of older generations, he said.

The talk was part of Stapleton’s bid to spend two days in every county of Montana. Earlier in the day he had spoken with some school children, and he also had plans to visit local businesses.

Reporter Peregrine Frissell can be reached at (406) 758-4438 or [email protected].