GREAT FALLS — It was a big week in Montana politics. Governor Steve Bullock’s announcement about mail-in voting was one of many changes to the November election made right before Bullock and Republican Senator Steve Daines go head to head in their first televised debate on Saturday.
The governor announced this week that all Montana counties will have the option to expand their use of mail-in ballots, although they will still be required to offer in-person voting. The move is similar to how the state and many Montana counties handled voting back in the primary election, when the pandemic first gripped the nation.
“We had record numbers turn out in the primary across the state of Montana,” said Rina Moore, the Cascade County clerk and recorder.
Cascade County is one of several major Montana counties already indicating a preference for expanding mail-in ballots. 82% of voters in Cascade County vote by mail using absentee ballots, according to Moore. Moore will recommend an all mail-in ballot election to the Cascade County Commission. She says the city is no stranger to the process.
“It is no different than every school election and every city election that we’ve run for the last 15 years — those are all full mail-ballot election,” she said.
Disagreement remains among local political leaders about the move. Cleve Loney, chair of the Cascade County Republicans, called the decision “wrong” and said he’s worried about election fraud occurring as a result of the decision. No evidence exists that election fraud has ever occurred in Cascade County; mail-in ballot elections are common practice in municipalities around the country, and they long preceded the pandemic.
Carl Donovan, past chair of the Cascade County Democrats, praised the move toward mail-in voting and called it “a great idea to keep people safe,” adding that Moore and her team “run a tight ship and are beyond reproach.”
Regardless of how the ballots are handled, some names may not be on them. A Helena judge ruled on Friday that Green Party candidates may be off the November ballot; that news came in the wake of the Montana Libertarian Party’s decision not to nominate a candidate for Montana’s U.S. Senate race.
Donovan and Loney agreed that third-party candidates in Montana races tend to pull votes away from the two major parties, although they disagreed to what extent. Loney claimed that Libertarian candidates typically detract more so from the Republican vote; Donovan called it a “toss-up.”
Cascade County does not appear to have an organized Green Party that MTN News could contact for this story, and the Cascade County Libertarian Party did not respond to MTN News’ request for comment.
The upheaval comes ahead of the first debate for one of Montana’s two U.S. Senate seats, with Steve Bullock and Steve Daines going head to head Saturday night. Local party officials would like to see issues brought up that affect Cascade County in particular.
“In Cascade County, we have actually a drug distribution problem,” Loney said. “We’ve got to get a handle on the drug problem or we’re never going to get a handle on child abuse or anything else around the state.”
“I would like to see the economy brought up,” Donovan said,” [and] see what kinds of jobs and things we can keep.”
