Montana Supreme Court allows signatures of inactive voters to count toward petitions seeking to qualify constitutional initiatives for the November ballot, including one to protect abortion rights
HELENA, Mont. — The Montana Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that it will count the signatures of inactive voters on petitions seeking to qualify constitutional initiatives for the November ballot, including one to protect abortion rights.
District Court Judge Mike Menahan ruled last Tuesday that Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen’s office improperly changed election rules to reject inactive voter signatures from three ballot initiatives after the signatures had been turned in to counties and after some signatures had been verified. The change to longstanding practices involved reprogramming the state’s election software.
Jacobsen’s office filed a motion with the Montana Supreme Court last Thursday requesting a emergency order to block Menahan’s ruling which gave counties until Wednesday to verify the signatures of inactive voters who had been rejected. Lawyers for organizations supporting the ballot initiatives and the secretary of state’s office agreed to the terms of the temporary injunction blocking the secretary of state’s changes.
The judges said Jacobsen’s office had failed to meet the requirements for an emergency order, saying they had failed to convince them that Menahan was operating under a legal error.
“We further disagree with Jacobsen that the TRO creates a grave injustice, as Jacobsen’s actions in reprogramming the petition processing software after the county election administrators had begun processing petitions created the circumstances giving rise to this lawsuit,” the judges wrote.
A hearing on an injunction to block the changes will be held in Menahan on Friday.
The groups that filed the lawsuit — Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights and Montanans for Election Reform — alleged that for decades the state had accepted signatures from inactive voters, defined as people who filed universal change-of-address forms and then failed to respond to county attempts to confirm their address. They can restore their active voter status by changing their address, going to the polls or requesting a mail ballot.
Supporters of the initiative to protect abortion rights in the state constitution said more than enough signatures had been verified by Friday’s deadline to get it on the ballot. Supporters of initiatives to create nonpartisan primaries and another to require a candidate to win a majority of the vote to win a general election have said they also expect to have enough signatures.