An initiative to ask voters if they want to protect the right to a pre-viability abortion in Montana’s constitution has enough signatures to appear on the November ballot, supporters said Friday.

County election officials have verified 74,186 voter signatures, more than the 60,359 needed for the constitutional initiative to go before voters. It has also met the threshold of 10% of voters in 51 House Districts — more than the required 40 districts, Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights said.

“We’re excited to have met the valid signature threshold and the House District threshold required to qualify this critical initiative for the ballot,” Kiersten Iwai, executive director of Forward Montana and spokesperson for Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights said in a statement.

Still pending is whether the signatures of inactive voters should count toward the total.

Montana’s secretary of state said they shouldn’t, but it didn’t make that statement until after the signatures were gathered and after some counties had begun verifying them.

A Helena judge ruled Tuesday that the qualifications shouldn’t have been changed midstream and said the signatures of inactive voters that had been rejected should be verified and counted. District Judge Mike Menahan said those signatures could be accepted through next Wednesday.

The state has asked the Montana Supreme Court to overturn Menahan’s order, but it will have no effect on the initiative qualifying for the ballot.

“We will not stop fighting to ensure that every Montana voter who signed the petition has their signature counted,” Iwai said. “The Secretary of State and Attorney General have shown no shame in pulling new rules out of thin air, all to thwart the will of Montana voters and serve their own political agendas.”

Republican Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen must review and tabulate the petitions and is allowed to reject any petition that does not meet statutory requirements. Jacobsen must certify the general election ballots by Aug. 22.

The issue of whether abortion was legal was turned back to the states when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

Montana’s Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that the state constitutional right to privacy protects the right to a pre-viability abortion. But the Republican controlled Legislature passed several bills in 2023 to restrict abortion access, including one that says the constitutional right to privacy does not protect abortion rights. Courts have blocked several of the laws, but no legal challenges have been filed against the one that tries to overturn the 1999 Supreme Court ruling.

Montanans for Election Reform, which also challenged the rule change over petition signatures, has said they believe they have enough signatures to ask voters if they want to amend the state constitution to hold open primary elections, rather than partisan ones, and to require candidates to win a majority of the vote in order to win a general election.

Are you kidding me? Just as I finish writing about a young, healthy 24-year-old young lady, Taylee Bornong, who was hit head on by a wrong way driver just outside of Livingston on July, 10th, another incident takes place.

In the case involving Taylee, 19 calls were made about seeing the person driving the wrong way, semi’s blasted their horns hoping to draw attention to the careless driver, and that didn’t stop the driver.

HELP TAYLEE’S FAMILY HERE

Just 9 days later, there is another incident involving a wrong way driver. This time, it was first reported outside of Three Forks, with a stop taking place by Logan.

During the early morning hours of July 18th (2 AM), reports came in about someone driving the wrong way down Interstate 90.

The man was driving a stolen vehicle when he was reported to police for driving eastbound in the westbound lane.

An officer was notified of the reckless driving incident and was able to set up another officer down the road with the appropriate stopping tools. At mile marker 284, stop strips were set up and the vehicle was stopped.

What if the officers were not able to stop this man? How many more lives would have been put in danger?

Wrong way driving has become increasingly common this year and one of the major factors in these incidents is alcohol. On more than one occasion, alcohol has been detected in the system of the driver.

The city has put up more signs near interstate on and off ramps to try and prevent people from heading down the interstate at 70+mph going the wrong way. It seems like it did help as we went a couple of months without an incident, but now in July, less than two weeks apart, we have two wrong way driving incidents.

What are the next steps we need to take to prevent this from happening?