Montana
Montana polling places are busy across the state • Daily Montanan
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.
Everyone makes mistakes, even experienced professionals; a good reminder for the rest of us to learn from those mistakes. The motion in State v. Stroup starts off well in its initial pages (no case law hallucinations), but is then followed by several pages of two other motions, which I don’t think the lawyer was planning to file, and which appear to have been AI-generated: It begins with the “Below is concise motion language you can drop into …” language quoted above.
Griffen Smith (Missoulian) reported on the story, and included the prosecutor’s motion to strike that filing, on the grounds that it violates a local rule (3(G)) requiring disclosure of the use of generative AI:
The document does not include a generative artificial intelligence disclosure as required. However, page 7 begins as follows: “Below is concise motion language you can drop into a ‘Motion to Admit Mental-Disease Evidence and for Related Instructions’ keyed to 45-6-204, 45-6-201, and 4614-102. Adjust headings/captions to your local practice.” Page 10 states “Below is a full motion you can paste into your pleading, then adjust names, dates, and styles to fit local practice.” These pages also include several apparent hyperlinks to “ppl-ai-file-upload.s3.amazonaws,” “ppl-ai-fileupload.s3.amazonaws+1,” and others. The document includes what appears to be an attempt at a second case caption on page 12. It is not plausible on its face that any source other than generative AI would have created such language for a filed version of a brief….
There’s more in that filing, but here’s one passage:
While generative AI can be a useful tool for some purposes and may have greater application in the future, when used improperly, and without meaningful review, it can ultimately damage both the perception and the reality of the profession. One assumes that Mr. Stroup has had, or will at some point have, an opportunity to review the filing made on his behalf. What impression could a review of pgs. 12-19 leave upon a defendant who struggles with paranoia and delusional thinking? While AI could theoretically one day become a replacement for portions of staff of experienced attorneys, it is readily apparent that this day has not yet arrived.
The Missoulan article includes this response:
In a Wednesday interview, Office of Public Defender Division Administrator Brian Smith told the Missoulian the AI-generated language was inadvertently included in an unrelated filing. And he criticized the county attorney’s office for filing a “four-page diatribe about the dangers of AI” instead of working with the defense to correct her mistake.
“That’s not helping the client or the case,” Smith said, “and all you are doing is trying to throw a professional colleague under the bus.”
As I mentioned, the lawyer involved seems quite experienced, and ran for the Montana Public Service Commission in 2020 (getting nearly 48% of the vote) and for the House of Representatives in Montana’s first district in 2022 (getting over 46% of the vote) and in 2024 (getting over 44%). “Его пример другим наука,” Pushkin wrote in Eugene Onegin—”May his example profit others,” in the Falen translation.
Thanks to Matthew Monforton for the pointer.
HELENA — You probably have goals and plans for 2026—the Montana Department of Agriculture does too.
“We’re really focusing on innovative agricultural practices,” Montana Department of Agriculture director Jillien Streit said.
It’s no secret that agriculture—farming and ranching—is not easy. There are long days, planning, monitoring crops and livestock, and other challenges beyond farmers’ and ranchers’ control.
(WATCH: Montana Department of Agriculture focusing on innovation in 2026)
Montana Department of Agriculture focusing on innovation in 2026
“We have very low commodity prices across the board,” Streit said. “We still have very high input prices across the board, and we have really high prices when it comes to our equipment, and so, it’s a really tough year.”
But innovation, including new practices, partnerships and technology use, can help navigate some of those challenges.
“We can’t make more time and we can’t make more land, so we need to start putting together innovative practices that help us maximize what our time and land can do,” Streit said.
Practices range from using technology like autonomous tractors and virtual fencing—allowing rangers to contain and move cattle right from their phones—to regenerative farming and ranching.
“It is bringing cattle back into farming operations to be able to work with cover cropping practices to invigorate the soil for new soil health benefits,” Streit said.
The Montana Department of Agriculture is working to help producers learn, share, and collaborate on new ideas to work in their operations.
The department will share stories of practices that work from farms and ranches across the state. Also, within the next year or so, Streit said the department is hoping to roll out technology to help producers collaborate.
“(It’s) providing a communication platform where people can get together and really help each other out by utilizing each other’s assets,” she said.
While not easy, agriculture is still one of Montana’s largest industries, and Streit said innovating and sharing ideas across the state can keep it going long into the future.
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