Polling places across Montana were busy Tuesday morning.

Montana voters stood in some long lines from Yellowstone County to Missoula County to register to vote, and they cruised through parking lots to drop off their ballots.

In Missoula, Shelby Richards stood in line with pup Rose, a service animal in training to help with her severe post traumatic stress disorder.

Richards, who has a 6-year-old daughter, said she believes the economy has been in decline.

“It’s time for some things to change and make it livable for families,” Richards said.

She said she wants to see former President Donald Trump and fellow Republican Tim Sheehy, running to oust Democrat incumbent Jon Tester in the U.S. Senate, take office.

Tester and Sheehy have been in an expensive and heated battle being watched nationally with control of the Senate in the balance.

That race and the presidential outcome aren’t likely to be known on Tuesday night, according to previous races Tester has run in Montana and elections experts watching national polling.

Outside the Elections Center in Missoula, Community Emergency Response Team workers directed voters driving through the parking lot.

CERT’s Dawn Couch said people had been kind and patient with each other, and a few were honking and yelling the names of their candidates.

She said the elections staff had been “amazing.”

“It’s been really, really well run,” Couch said.

In the parking lot, Logan Kostka looked for a pen to sign his name and turn in his ballot. Kostka said women’s reproductive rights were one factor in the 2024 election, but not the only one.

“As an LGBTQ+ member, a lot of the stuff coming from Project 2025 is literally against my belief system and my being as a human,” said Kostka, 20.

Project 2025 is a conservative playbook devised by the Heritage Foundation, other conservative groups, and more than 200 former staffers of Trump. It contains controversial policy ideas such as doing away with the federal Department of Education.

Greg Weller, also with CERT, said traffic Tuesday morning had come in waves. As he waited to direct voters, one rolled up with an open window.

“I have one to drop off,” the voter said.

At least one neighborhood polling place at an elementary school in Missoula didn’t have lines out the door.

Shelby Jessop walked down the sidewalk sporting an “I Voted” sticker on her coat. Jessop, whose little girl followed, said abortion is a top issue for her, and she stands with Sheehy.

“I think that we should all be a part of what decisions are made in our country,” Jessop said. “I wish more people would vote, honestly.”

In Lewis and Clark County, more than 100 people were in line to vote or update their registration around 11 a.m., while people simultaneously came in to drop their absentee ballots off.

A county election official told the Daily Montanan it had been “busy as hell” all morning and likely would be throughout the rest of the day.

Montana Secretary of State’s Office Elections Director Austin James was at the county elections office to check in and said things were similarly busy in many counties across Montana.

James said he’d gotten to work at 4 a.m. Tuesday and that a team was working at the office to ensure there were no cyberattacks or other malicious activity occurring within election offices, but he reported no issues so far. He said the office would not release a county’s results until everyone in line had voted to ensure none of their votes were influenced by early results.

Election workers at four polling sites the Daily Montanan visited around Helena in the late morning and early afternoon continued to see a steady stream of voters coming through. Several said they had lines to start the morning at 7 a.m., that the turnout was much higher than in the primary, and that they had been busy throughout the morning.

In Yellowstone County, polling places were filled on Tuesday morning. Election officials there said they hadn’t seen such a turnout from voters since at least the 2008 election.

Cascade County officials had to open up extra room to house long lines of voters waiting to register, the Montana Free Press reported. Voters in Gallatin County stood in line through a morning dose of snow, social media posts show. Nora Shelly of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported that some of those voters in Gallatin County had been standing in line for four hours in the snow. Officials there said they don’t anticipate having the first results in until at least 11 p.m.

By 1:30 p.m., nearly 81% of Montana’s 549,080 absentee voters had returned their ballots — meaning turnout was about 55.6% of voters at the time.

In Kalispell, voters in 27 precincts visited the Flathead County Fairgrounds to cast their ballots. Outside, supporters of U.S. Representative Ryan Zinke, who is running for re-election to represent Montana’s 1st Congressional District, waved signs, blasted music and stayed warm under heat lamps.

For a time, Zinke himself was out on the sidewalk waving at the cars lined up to enter the fairgrounds. Zinke will be spending election night in Whitefish.

Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr is seeking reelection in a race that could allow the transgender lawmaker to return to the House floor nearly two years after she was silenced and sanctioned by her Republican colleagues.

Zephyr, a Democrat, is highly favored to defeat Republican Barbara Starmer in her Democrat-leaning district in the college town of Missoula. Republicans still dominate statewide with control of the governor’s office and a two-thirds majority in the Legislature.

The first-term Democrat was last permitted to speak on the chamber floor in April 2023, when she refused to apologize for saying some lawmakers would have blood on their hands for supporting a ban on gender-affirming medical care for youth.

Before voting to expel Zephyr from the chamber, Republicans called her words hateful and accused her of inciting a protest that brought the session to a temporary standstill. Some even sought to equate the non-violent demonstration with an insurrection.

Her exile technically ended when the 2023 session adjourned, but because the Legislature did not meet this year, she must win reelection to make her long-awaited return to the House floor in 2025.

Zephyr said she hopes the upcoming session will focus less on politicizing transgender lives, including her own, and more on issues that affect a wider swath of Montana residents, such as housing affordability and health care access.

“Missoula is a city that has cared for me throughout the toughest periods of my life. It is a city that I love deeply,” she told The Associated Press. “So, for me, getting a chance to go back in that room and fight for the community that I serve is a joy and a privilege.”

Zephyr’s clash with Montana Republicans propelled her into the national spotlight at a time when GOP-led legislatures were considering hundreds of bills to restrict transgender people in sports, schools, health care and other areas of public life.

She has since become a leading voice for transgender rights across the country, helping fight against a torrent of anti-trans rhetoric on the presidential campaign trail from Donald Trump and his allies. Her campaign season has been split between Montana and other states where Democrats are facing competitive races.

Zephyr said she views her case as one of several examples in which powerful Republicans have undermined the core tenets of democracy to silence opposition. She has warned voters that another Trump presidency could further erode democracy on a national level, citing the then-president’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump’s vice presidential pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, has said he does not think his running mate lost the 2020 election, echoing Trump’s false claims that the prior presidential election was stolen from him.

Zephyr’s sanction came weeks after Tennessee Republicans expelled Democratic Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson from the Legislature for chanting along with gun control supporters who packed the House gallery in response to a Nashville school shooting that killed six people, including three children. Jones and Pearson were later reinstated.

Oklahoma Republicans also censured a nonbinary Democratic colleague after state troopers said the lawmaker blocked them from questioning an activist accused of assaulting a police officer during a protest over legislation banning children from receiving gender-affirming care, such as puberty-blocking drugs and hormones.

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Schoenbaum reported from Salt Lake City.

HELENA — Whether you like it or not, we are supposed to get snow this week, and the Montana Department of Transportation is looking for snowplow drivers to help keep roads clear over Montana’s winter months.

“When you’re having a bad day in the wintertime, looking at these trucks, they’re a savior. That’s what you want to see on the road, and they’re out there doing it,” said Doug McBroom, maintenance operations manager for the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT).



There are roughly 600 plow trucks statewide, which are turned into dump trucks or maintenance vehicles during summer months.

Allie Kaiser MTN News



Previous experience is not required, but applicants must be 18 years of age or older and have or are working to get a commercial license.

MDT plows between 3 to 4 million miles of roadways each year.

Mcbroom said, “If you think about it, it’s enough to go to and from the moon, I think, six or seven times.”

Allie Kaiser MTN News

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The positions are temporary, typically November through April, so MDT says many of their hires are construction workers.



If hired, the employee must live or relocate within 45 miles of the work headquarters and have a phone or be reasonably accessible to headquarters to ensure they can quickly reach an emergency location.

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“They have a family too, and they want to make sure it’s safe for their family. They plow the roads as if their kids are driving the roads, which is incredible.”

MDT hopes to hire between 100 and 200 drivers by the end of November, and you can find where to apply here.