State lawmakers on a special Senate committee Monday offered a glimpse into how ongoing concerns over election security will factor into the upcoming 2025 Montana Legislature, reviewing a pair of potential proposals that would add new legal requirements — and new costs — for county election officials.
The first of the draft bills discussed by members of the Senate Select Committee on Elections would require all county election offices statewide to install camera systems to monitor and record local vote-counting activities. According to information compiled by the Montana Association of Counties, at least 28 counties, including many smaller rural counties as well as Yellowstone and Lewis and Clark counties, do not currently have such systems in place.
The proposal would also mandate that those systems be registered with the Montana secretary of state’s office, that county election offices retain video records for 22 months after an election, and that counties conduct public testing of the cameras ahead of an election.
Such testing and recordings have become a routine demand among certain Republican lawmakers and grassroots activists skeptical of the integrity of Montana’s election procedures. In 2021, then state Rep. Brad Tschida sought access to a trove of records from Missoula County associated with the local 2020 general election including video records from the county’s election office as part of an effort to investigate allegations, since disproven, of irregularities in the results. Tschida ultimately filed a lawsuit against the county, which declined to furnish the requested footage as it had already been erased in accordance with existing retention laws, but was rebuffed by a district court judge last year.
Republican Sen. Theresa Manzella of Hamilton, a Senate select committee member who in 2022 established an unofficial “ad hoc election integrity committee” alongside Tschida and several other lawmakers, said Monday she is a “strong proponent” of the proposed camera requirement.
Legislative staff and county election officials Monday highlighted several concerns with a security camera mandate, namely the cost to county budgets. Lincoln County Election Administrator Melanie Howell told committee members that her office’s recent installation of six cameras totaled $6,600. Ravalli County Clerk and Recorder Regina Plettenberg said her county has invested more than $50,000 in camera systems that monitor various election-related activities in two separate buildings. The provisional bill language reviewed by the committee did not include state funding to help counties cover the costs of the equipment and long-term electronic storage.
Acknowledging that the proposal constituted an unfunded mandate to Montana counties, the committee opted not to forward the proposed language to the upcoming Legislature. However, Manzella and Sen. Shelley Vance, R-Belgrade, expressed interest in revisiting the topic once the session is underway, perhaps in the form of an incentive for counties rather than a requirement.
The committee did approve several other recommendations to address concerns highlighted by a court-ordered recount of the June primary election in Butte-Silver Bow County, which Republican Senate leaders established the committee to oversee. Those recommendations include the formation of a working group of state and county election officials to develop a uniform election results spreadsheet for use by all counties, and several updates to a statewide election handbook maintained by the secretary of state. Committee members also voted to forward a draft bill to the 2025 Legislature that would direct county officials to investigate any discrepancies in local election results uncovered during post-election canvasses until the discrepancy is reconciled and determined not to have impacted the outcome.
“In my opinion, this is right up there with the freedom of religion and freedom of speech,” Manzella said of the committee’s work, which Monday’s proceedings officially brought to a close. “Our right to expect fair, free, transparent elections is one of our greatest freedoms and responsibilities.”
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