Get an insider’s look into what’s happening in and around the halls of power with expert reporting, analysis and insight from the editors and reporters of Montana Free Press. Sign up to get the free Capitolized newsletter delivered to your inbox every Thursday.
January 4, 2024
A legislative interim committee Thursday lent overwhelming support to a proposed ballot initiative that, if passed by voters in 2024, would require most Montana elections to be decided by a majority vote.
The State Administration and Veterans’ Affairs Committee voted 9-1 in favor of Ballot Issue 13. This means that signature-gathering sheets for the initiative will note the committee’s support for the proposal.
Backers of the ballot initiative say requiring a majority vote to win an election — as opposed to a plurality, the threshold under Montana’s current system — will create a more responsive, collaborative government.
“Our growing coalition believes strongly that it is … important philosophically that the person who represents a group of constituents enjoys the support of the majority of people,” former GOP state Sen. Frank Garner, one of the initiative’s backers, told the committee Thursday. “We think that’s important for a number of reasons, which also include that it tends to provide for the opportunity for more collaboration, more inclusive representation for that group of people, and we think that is an important value in good government.”
He added that he believes requiring candidates to capture a greater slice of voters will diminish the influence of interest groups in swaying close elections.
The initiative would apply to Montana’s constitutionally defined offices, including the governorship, most executive branch positions and state and federal legislative seats. The text of the initiative leaves some room for interpretation, directing legislators to prescribe what happens if no one candidate receives a majority of the vote. This could mean a series of run-off elections or a so-called instant run-off, a type of ranked-choice voting system similar to what voters recently adopted in Alaska.
Rob Cook, another former Republican lawmaker and initiative sponsor, told committee members Thursday that there are plenty of examples of majority-vote elections. Legislative leadership elections are decided by a majority vote, he said, as are elections for statewide leadership positions of the Montana Republican Party.
The group running the initiative, Montanans for Election Reform, consists of Cook, Garner and several other former officials and activists who generally occupied the center lanes of their parties. Cook and Garner in particular were prominent members of the coalition of comparative moderate Republicans usually called the Solutions Caucus. One of the group’s board members is former state Sen. Tom Jacobsen, a centrist Democrat.
“We’re concerned about the increasing divisiveness in our politics,” Jacobsen told lawmakers Thursday. “We can change the structure of how we elect people to better ensure that elected officials are accountable to a majority of their constituents.”
State Sen. Wendy McKamey, R-Great Falls, was the only committee member who voted not to support the initiative. She said she felt the current system works adequately.
“I’m not going to say that we’re treating our constitution like a science project, but it does feel a little bit like it here,” she said during Thursday’s meeting.
Ballot Issue 13 has already received legal approval by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen. If supporters gather enough signatures — equivalent to 10% of the total number of votes cast for the office of governor in the last general election — the proposal will be listed on the 2024 ballot as CI-127.
Montanans for Election Reform is also sponsoring a related initiative that would create a system of open primaries in the state under which the top-four vote-getters in a given race would advance to the general election, regardless of party. That proposal received support from the interim committee late last year but failed to pass Knudsen’s legal review. The Montana Supreme Court later overturned Knudsen’s decision, and Montanans for Election Reform is now able to gather signatures for the proposal.
Together, the group says, the initiatives will work in concert to create a less divided and better-functioning government.
—Arren Kimbel-Sannit
Helping Know Your Right to Know
A group of Montana law students and young activists launched an organization this week to help facilitate freedom-of-information requests and to educate both the public and policymakers on the state Constitution’s right to know.
The founders of the Montana Transparency Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, say they want to complement the state’s existing landscape of FOI resources — namely, attorneys — by helping everyday Montanans with the initial steps of requesting public information from their government.
“We realized that it can be really hard to know what’s the best way to do this, what’s the timeline, will it cost money, what questions to ask,” Jacob Linfesty, the organization’s president and a Harvard Law School student originally from Billings, told Capitolized. “If you’re an average Montanan, if you don’t have connections, a lawyer, these questions are hard to answer.”
The idea for the project hatched when Linfesty was working with the group’s now-secretary, Claremont McKenna College senior Caroline Bullock, and now-treasurer, University of Wisconsin law student Lydia Dal Nogare, at the Helena non-profit public interest law firm Upper Seven last summer. The trio, working as non-attorney associates, assisted in some First Amendment and freedom-of-information cases, Linfesty said, and saw some of the challenges that people can face when requesting even the most basic public information.
“A lot of Montanas don’t know they even have a right to know,” Linfesty said.
Soon, the nascent group grew to include two additional University of Montana law students, now-vice president Lauren Halverson and now-communications chair Addie Slanger. Even outside of Upper Seven, an influential law firm that often files constitutional challenges against the state, the group has some notable connections in Montana’s political sphere: Caroline Bullock is the daughter of former Democratic Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, and Addie Slanger is the daughter of attorney Sean Slanger, a lobbyist whose clients have included the State Bar of Montana.
Linfesty said Thursday the group’s work will be non-partisan, though not necessarily non-political. The Montana Transparency Project’s website features a page-long non-partisanship policy, which states the group “will not assist candidates, campaigns, ballot measure campaigns, political parties, independent committees … or any other group organized exclusively or primarily for political purposes … with information requests.”
The group may make some of its own requests, the policy states, if the release of the relevant information would foster the public’s confidence in political institutions, allow for the examination of public expenditures, maintain accountability for officials, prevent secret government conduct, and support the right to know and “the other rights enshrined in the … Constitution.”
A form on the project’s website allows those seeking assistance to generally describe the information they’re looking for and what kind of help they need. From there, Linfesty and his colleagues would help them format, refine and target their request to receive the best result possible in the least amount of time.
This would be a help for not just members of the public but also public information officers, who sometimes receive requests that for various reasons are not “administrable,” Linfesty said.
“We’ve had a lot of conversations with [public information officers], and one issue that’s important is the administration of the right to know for Montanas to make a request,” Linfesty said. “PIOs often get requests that are hard to understand what they’re looking for, or it yields 10,000 pages as a response, which isn’t helpful to the requestor.”
On the flip side, he said, it’s also important to educate government officials about their obligations under the law.
As nobody in the group — for now, at least — is licensed to practice law, the project will not (and, legally, cannot) offer legal advice. That sets it apart from the Montana Freedom of Information Hotline, which is connected to attorney Mike Meloy, or from non-profit firms like Upper Seven.
Linfesty said the organization’s primary focus will be on “step one of the information process,” while the hotline generally works with people further along the way.
“The Montana Transparency Project will complement the free services the Montana Freedom of Information Hotline provides through Right to Know specialist Peter ‘Mike’ Meloy, a veteran Helena attorney,” the hotline’s chairwoman, Choteau Acantha editor Melody Martinsen, said in a press release announcing the transparency project’s launch. “MTP will provide another option for citizens, particularly, to receive free, non-attorney assistance in filing requests for public documents, which can be confusing and frustrating for people new to the process.”
Linfesty said that the money for the project’s startup costs came from the founding quintet’s pockets, but they’ll be soliciting grants and donations in the future.
“It’s not funded by any outside interest. It’s funded by our own interest in securing the promise of the Montana Constitution,” he said.
—Arren Kimbel-Sannit
Score One for the Fourth Estate
A district court judge ruled last week that candidates for judicial positions do not have a presumptive expectation of privacy when being interviewed for the job, the result of a lawsuit filed by the Choteau Acantha newspaper and Montana Free Press.
The Acantha and MTFP lawsuit contended that an advisory council that Gov. Greg Gianforte appointed to help him winnow the field of candidates for a judicial vacancy in north-central Montana in March unconstitutionally conducted interviews and deliberations in executive session, violating the state’s right-to-know laws.
“The judge confirmed our understanding of the Montana Constitution and case law, that applicants for judicial vacancies do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in matters related to their qualifications,” Melody Martinsen, the editor and co-owner of the Acantha, said in a statement to Capitolized.
The governor’s office said it intends to appeal the ruling to the Montana Supreme Court.
“The governor is committed to protecting an individual’s right to privacy while maintaining the public’s right to participation,” Gianforte spokesperson Kaitlin Price said in a statement Tuesday.
—Arren Kimbel-Sannit
Editor’s note: Capitolized author Arren Kimbel-Sannit attended the March meeting of the advisory council and is named in the court’s ruling.
On Background
Knudsen’s office blocks top-four primary ballot initiative, prompting lawsuit: This prior story from MTFP has more detail about Montanans for Election Reform’s goals and funding.
A small-town reporter’s fight to open Montana’s judicial appointment process: For more on the background of the Acantha and MTFP’s lawsuit over the judicial vacancy process, see this story from last year.