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While opening my mail at my kitchen table a few years ago, I had a realization about what voting is often like for people who don’t happen to keep track of state-level politics for a living.
My absentee ballot had arrived for Helena’s local school elections. As I pulled it from the envelope and skimmed the names of my would-be school board members, a rather embarrassing thought struck me: I have no idea who the heck any of these people are — how am I supposed to cast a responsible vote?
As ballots begin heading toward voters’ mailboxes for this year’s state and federal primary election, which concludes June 4, I suspect that there will be a lot of moments like that at kitchen tables across Montana.
Top-of-the-ballot candidates like U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and his most prominent GOP challenger, Tim Sheehy, are in the process of spending millions of dollars on advertising to make sure you know who they are. But, depending on where you live in Montana and which party primary you vote in, your June ballot could have more than 30 names on it. Some of them will probably be unfamiliar.
Our American system of governance relies on voters knowing enough about candidates to cast responsible votes. One of the most important jobs we have here at Montana Free Press is helping voters know enough about their options that they can decide who best aligns with their political values.
To that end, we launched the 2024 edition of our digital election guide this week, presenting information on all 62 candidates seeking state and federal office. We were able to get most of them to respond to questionnaires tailored to the positions they’re aiming to fill, detailing their stances on everything from housing affordability (should the federal government get involved there?) to Montana’s expanded Medicaid program (up for a renewal vote when the Legislature meets next year). Our questions were based in part on the top issues identified by MTFP readers in the survey we circulated earlier this year.
We’ve also partnered with the Montana League of Women Voters to put questions to the 300-plus candidates running for the state Legislature. As of this writing, more than 100 of them have responded to that questionnaire (for the aspiring legislators reading this, we’re still accepting late responses).
In all, our election guide puts about 120,000 words about the current slate of candidates into the public record — roughly as many as the text of Jane Austin’s “Pride and Prejudice.” Most of that material comes from candidates’ own words as they try to answer (or avoid answering) our questions about specific policy issues.
I hope that taking a thoughtful look at a few of those words will help you navigate this year’s long ballot, perhaps filling in some of the information gaps that TV spots, endorsement mailers and social media posts won’t address. Ideally, those responses will also give the candidates who took the time to write thoughtful responses the chance to compete for your vote on the strength of their ideas, rather than their partisan identities and advertising budgets alone.
As always, we welcome your feedback about this work.
See the full guide here: MTFP’s 2024 Election Guide.
—Eric Dietrich, Reporter
Departed 🥀
One of the last living delegates to Montana’s 1972 Constitutional Convention, Arlyne Reichert of Great Falls, died last week at the age of 98.
Reichert, originally from Buffalo, New York, moved to Great Falls with her husband Harold “Rick” Reichert in 1945. She was active in the League of Women Voters, school associations and other public causes throughout the next several decades in Montana as she helped raise her five children.
In a 2022 interview celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Constitutional Convention, Reichert credited her mother, an advocate for women’s suffrage, with helping instill in her a passion for politics from a young age.
“When people would not vote, in big general elections, they’d say, ‘Well, [I’m] not interested in politics.’ She would say, ‘You may not be interested in government and politics, but they’re interested in you,’” Reichert said.
Being elected as a constitutional convention delegate was “one of the highlights of my life,” Reichert said, reflecting on the hard work of all the participants over the course of about two months.
Reichert was well-known for advancing other civic causes, too. Beginning in the 1990s, she worked to protect the historic Tenth Street Bridge in Great Falls from being demolished. That campaign to maintain the bridge, originally built in the 1920s, and make it accessible to pedestrians was realized over decades. The Great Falls City Commission voted in 2021 to rename the bridge after the Arlyne Reichert Community Heritage, or ARCH, bridge in her honor.
Reichert’s formal obituary is available here.
—Mara Silvers, Reporter
The Viz 📈
Nearly all of Montana’s large school districts, most facing notable budget crunches, put property tax increases of one form or another before voters in annual school elections that concluded Tuesday. The results, coming after last year’s residential tax increases produced widespread angst among Montana property owners, were a mixed bag:
Voters in Bozeman and Missoula approved comparatively modest operating levies, which will allow those districts to pull more tax dollars into their general funds. Missoula voters also endorsed a larger elementary school-level safety and security levy, though voted down an analogous levy for Missoula-area high schools.
Voters in Helena and Billings, however, rejected every proposal on their ballots, rebuffing efforts by those districts to pitch higher collections to fund school safety measures.
READ MORE: Levy requests produce mixed results for Montana’s largest districts.
—Alex Sakariassen, Reporter and Eric Dietrich, Deputy Editor
Fact Check ✔️
A few weeks back, Gov. Greg Gianforte made a pit stop in Hobson as part of his bid for reelection this year. The campaign speech on April 30 covered a lot of ground, from workforce development to foster care to the rising cost of property taxes for Montana families. Gianforte, a Republican, also took a moment to endorse two 2024 candidates for the Montana Supreme Court — Cory Swanson and Dan Wilson — and offer critical commentary on the court’s current makeup.
“We don’t want Republican judges or Democrat judges,” Gianforte said at the campaign stop, which was covered by a MTFP reporter. “We just want ones that are going to rule on the law. That’s not what we have right now.”
However, in subsequent comments chastising the court for a March decision striking down four election laws passed by Republicans in 2021, Gianforte misstated several facts about election laws he has signed and their resulting legal challenges. For starters, he claimed that a law he signed eliminating same-day voter registration set a new registration deadline of 5 p.m. the day before an election. In fact, the new deadline was noon on the day before Election Day, a change justices deemed unconstitutional partly on the basis that more than 70,000 Montanans have utilized election-day registration since it was first established in 2005.
Gianforte’s other claims appeared to conflate the Montana Supreme Court’s March ruling with other legislative and legal developments involving election administration. He asserted the Montana Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional a law granting the secretary of state greater authority in maintaining voter registration lists. None of the four laws reviewed by the justices in the March case dealt with voter rolls. Gianforte did sign a law in 2021 requiring annual maintenance of those rolls by county election officials, but that law has not been challenged in court.
Gianforte also claimed the state Supreme Court had overturned a bill prohibiting Montana voters from voting more than once. The so-called “double-voting” law, which expanded criminal penalties for voters who cast ballots in more than one location during the same election, was actually passed and signed during the 2023 legislative session. A federal judge blocked the law in a preliminary ruling last month on the basis that it could induce fear among voters of felony charges and “chill the protected activity of voter registration.” But that lawsuit is separate from the case the Supreme Court ruled on this spring. The “double-voting” law has not appeared before the Montana Supreme Court.
Election integrity continues to be a flashpoint in American politics. Conservatives have for years voiced grave concerns about the 2020 election and President Donald Trump’s defeat, fueling a wave of state-level policy proposals that supporters describe as critical safeguards for election security and accuracy. Critics of such changes often counter that such proposals restrict voter access and unduly burden individuals attempting to engage in the democratic process.
—Alex Sakariassen, Reporter
Next Steps 👣
The Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority says it is in the early stages of preparing a study that will outline everything required to bring a restored North Coast Hiawatha rail route through southern Montana to “shovel-ready” status. The organization told the Montana Legislature’s Interim Transportation Committee Wednesday that it anticipates the plan and an environmental impact statement for the route restoration will be in hand in two-and-a-half to three years.
The news came as part of an update on recent developments in the effort to restore passenger rail service in parts of Montana where such service was long ago discontinued.
Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority Chair David Strohmaier told lawmakers that the planning process is made possible by the North Coast Hiawatha’s inclusion in a “Corridor ID” project overseen by the Federal Railroad Administration and that the group had recently put out a request for proposals to hire a firm to create the study.
When the plan is complete, Strohmaier said his group will have a specific sense of station locations, schedules and any infrastructure investments — train, rail, signals and otherwise — that would be required to make the Seattle-Chicago route operational.
Rob Stapley, an administrator with the Montana Department of Transportation’s Rail, Transit and Planning Division, told lawmakers that the cost to complete the study is estimated at around $5 million. Most of that money will come from the federal government, but MDT anticipates that about $1 million of the funding will need to be found elsewhere.
Representatives from Amtrak and BNSF also participated in the panel.
—Amanda Eggert, Reporter
Highlights ☀️
In other news this week —
Parts of Montana received as much as 10 inches of precipitation as a mid-May snowstorm swept much of the state this week, providing some relief from what has been one of the driest winters on record. As Amanda Eggert reports, though, water managers say it’s still too soon to tell how streams, crops and forests will fare by late summer. We’re just starting to enter what are typically the wettest months of the year in Montana: May and June.
Bozeman’s fast-moving economy is drawing a growing population of Spanish-speaking immigrants, many of them undocumented. A High Country News story we republished this week, reported by Nick Bowlin, explores what life in Montana is like for a few of them.
—Eric Dietrich, Deputy Editor
On Our Radar 
Amanda — It’s hardly a feel-good movie, but “Civil War,” a dystopian look at an America-against-itself scenario, feels both spooky and resonant. Here’s to hoping its look at extreme political divisiveness is more “warning” than “premonition.”
Alex — Education is emerging as a key campaign talking point in 2024 — not surprising, really, given the degree to which public schools have been swept up in the nation’s broader cultural wars. The education news nonprofit Chalkbeat had a richly reported take this week on the origins of that political division.
Arren — Steve Albini, the hugely influential, fiercely independent and famously curmudgeonly rock producer and recording artist, died this week at 61. Though he was an icon of the Chicago scene, Albini was raised in Missoula. The Missoulian has more on his upbringing.
JoVonne — With graduation season upon us this spring, many Native students wonder whether their institutions will allow them to wear their traditional regalia during commencement ceremonies. ICT reported on tips from the Native American Rights Fund on how students can approach their institutions on the matter.
Mara — As a state with a large population of older residents, many Montanans are thinking about how to identify and prevent elder abuse and neglect. The Char-Koosta News reports that about 200 elders from the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes gathered with local public service officials for an inaugural conference on that topic in late April.
Eric — Meanwhile in Colorado, lawmakers appear to have struck a deal that addresses tax angst by cutting property tax rates for homeowners and businesses. According to the Colorado Sun, state income tax dollars would offset the resulting reduction to school revenues.
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