Montana working group seeks to answer questions on election processes

HELENA — Earlier this yr, lawmakers and election officers put collectively a working group to handle questions on Montana’s election system. With Election Day weeks away, the group says it needs to guarantee voters that the state’s elections are in fine condition.

“Montana’s election system is each sound and safe, and we should stay vigilant to maintain it that means,” mentioned Rep. David Bedey, R-Hamilton.

Bedey was certainly one of a number of members of the working group who spoke to lawmakers Wednesday throughout a gathering of the State Administration and Veterans’ Affairs Interim Committee.

The group included native election directors, representatives from the Montana Secretary of State’s Workplace and Commissioner of Political Practices, and lawmakers from each main events. They went over election guidelines and legal guidelines, checked out vote-tabulating machines and discovered concerning the post-election audit course of.

Bedey mentioned they concluded election officers and the volunteers who work with them are doing a superb job. He mentioned the tabulators – which depend the paper ballots Montanans vote on – are safe and might’t be accessed by means of the web, and the audit course of would catch any points with the depend.

Bedey mentioned, nationwide, teams on the proper and the left have each contributed to a lack of belief within the election system over the previous couple of many years, by questioning election outcomes.

“This can’t stand, and we can’t ignore it,” he mentioned. “We should deal with this assault, I imagine, on our elementary consultant democracy.”

The working group put collectively an 18-page doc, referred to as “Elections in Montana.” It solutions generally requested questions on issues like how election officers search to stop folks from registering or voting a number of occasions, and the way ballots are dealt with and counted.

The data is offered on the web site VotingInMontana.org, put collectively by election directors. It additionally consists of hyperlinks to essential types, dates and get in touch with data for state and native officers.

Additionally throughout Wednesday’s assembly, the Secretary of State’s Workplace and native election directors shared details about how they verify voter signatures on mail ballots. Every poll have to be signed, and officers evaluate these signatures to the signatures voters offered after they initially registered.

Stuart Fuller, the SOS’s election and voter companies supervisor, mentioned, sometimes, if a workers member questions whether or not the signature matches the one on file, a second one checks it. In the event that they nonetheless can’t affirm a match, the subsequent step is to contact the voter instantly – by cellphone, electronic mail or mail – to attempt to resolve the problem.

“The place we see the signatures not being the identical, the coaching is you reject it and confirm it with the voter,” Fuller mentioned.

In some instances, voters are required to come back in to resolve the discrepancy. If officers aren’t in a position to attain the voter, the poll will likely be rejected.

“More often than not, our rejections get become pluses,” mentioned Flathead County election supervisor Monica Eisenzimer. “We get lots of people which might be very grateful – they didn’t know that we really checked them; they know the rule is that we’re presupposed to verify them, however they didn’t notice that somebody really verifies their signature.”

Eisenzimer mentioned, in her workplace, solely probably the most skilled workers members are tasked with checking signatures. She estimated they’ll take care of a number of hundred signature points in an election cycle, out of greater than 60,000 votes solid. She mentioned just a few of these will likely be unable to be resolved.

Fuller mentioned election officers get coaching on verifying signatures each two years. They take a look at factors just like the capital letters, the way in which letters path off, letter spacing and the place the signature sits on the road. He mentioned the precise content material of the signature – using an preliminary versus a full title, for instance – doesn’t need to be precisely the identical to be able to depend.