Former Montana Rep. Frank Garner speaks about why he’s supporting Constitutional Initiatives 126 and 127 at a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters in Helena on Oct. 7, 2024 (Photo by Darrelll Ehrlick of the Daily Montanan)
At a forum on Monday night, both supporters and opponents of two constitutional initiatives that could change how Montana handles elections said it comes down to a balancing act — do voters want more choices or more information?
Two of the three constitutional initiatives that will be before voters as mail ballots start hitting mailboxes this week are aimed at changing the way Montana selects candidates. At an event sponsored by the League of Women Voters, supporters of Constitutional Initiative 126 and 127 said that both measures are meant to work together, but because of the state’s rule about one subject per amendment, the two appear on the ballot separately. And, both could stand alone, if passed by the voters.
The other ballot initiative, CI-128, would codify a right to an abortion and the right to choose when and if to carry a pregnancy to term. The three measures went through a rigorous process of signature collection and court challenges to make it before voters.
CI-126 would create a top-four primary that would allow voters to select their top choice for any elected office, regardless of party affiliation. Currently, Montana requires primary voters to select a party ballot to vote, and Frank Garner, a former Republican Montana legislator and former Kalispell Police Chief, is supporting CI-126 and CI-127. He said the current system robs Montanans of the choice of choosing the best candidates.
The top four vote-getters in the primary election would advance to the general election, where CI-127 may kick in, if supported by the voters.
CI-127 would require the elected candidate to get at least 50% of the vote. If that does not happen, then it would be up to the Legislature to choose which method of selecting a winner, for example a ranked-choice option or a second run-off election. Currently, the top vote-getter in Montana, even if there are a plurality of candidates, will win the election, regardless of whether the 50% threshold is met.
But opponents of the measure, led by Bozeman attorney and former Republican lawmaker Matthew Monforton, said the measures rob Montanans of valuable information they may need to make a better decision.
Monforton said that a portion of CI-126 doesn’t allow political parties’ endorsements to appear on the ballot, but does allow the candidate to declare a “preferred party.” He said this could cause confusion. For example, if the top four candidates all claim they’re Republicans, voters may not know who, if any, the party endorses.
Former lawmaker Matthew Monforton explains the opposition to Constitutional Initiatives 126 and 127 at a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters in Helena, Montana on Oct. 7, 2024 (Photo by Darrell Ehrlick of the Daily Montanan).
Meanwhile, Garner said concerns about the information are overblown and not rooted in the average voters’ experience.
“Do you have partisan races for city council in Helena?” he asked a full room of residents at the Lewis and Clark Library.
“No,” several audience members shouted back.
“Well, then however do you make a decision?” Garner replied.
He said that many races, including all judicial races in Montana, are nonpartisan, and yet voters often figure out who to vote for by researching the candidates, listening to debates or reading articles.
Garner went on to illustrate how a handful of voters often influence who gets on the ballot for the general election. He said voter rolls show that 40% of Montanans don’t identify with a specific party. And only 40% of voters tend to vote in the primary. Some legislative races either didn’t have a choice, or are in districts that heavily tilt toward one party or another. By his calculations, the 2022 Montana House Election had 88% of the body be decided by just 6% of the population.
“Our real goal here is to protect freedom of choice,” Garner said.
Because of that, he said that primary elections and candidates in general pander to a base or one narrow band of politically active constituents. And that puts many candidates out of touch with the majority of the people they represent, he said.
“It will change the incentives for the reps, and I’ve been in the belly of the beast and it will change them and cause them to listen to a lot more people,” Garner said. “Look at how hard they’ve made it to keep this off the ballot and get this killed, just to keep you from deciding whether you want this or not.”
But Monforton said that the primaries proposed by CI-126, which he called “jungle primaries,” means voting is diluted and a recipe for demagogues. He pointed to the 2016 Republican primary for president when Donald J. Trump used an open primary and a crammed field of presidential candidates to emerge with the nomination, even though he didn’t have the support of the majority of the GOP support.
“I 100% agree it’s a broken system,” Monforton said. “But this takes an already bad system and makes it worse. The road we’re going down gives less and less information.”
He said that taking the party endorsements off the ballot confuses voters, and doesn’t let them know which candidate the party supports. For better or worse, many voters want the certainty of knowing that a candidate has been through the party vetting process, and isn’t just affiliating with a party because he or she can.
“All it does is take away information. Certain candidates can put an ‘R’ or ‘D’ behind their name, but don’t have the responsibility of having to go through the process,” Monforton said.
Garner said that those ties to political parties, platforms and policies can also be used to strangle politicians.
He said that as a Republican who supported Medicaid expansion in Montana, he felt immense pressure, not from his constituents, but from the party leaders.
“And you know what they said was going to happen to me,” Garner asked.
“Primaried,” an audience member said back.
“Primaried,” Garner confirmed. “Not from my constituents, but from the people in power. The people in power want you to have to rely on that little letter on the ballots.”
Garner was able to hold his seat and was unable to run again for the Legislature immediately because of term limits.
CI-127 would require a winning candidate for any office to receive more than 50% of the vote in the general election. If a candidate does not receive enough votes to meet that, the wording of the initiative would allow the Legislature to determine how a winner is decided. Garner provided two states in which that currently happens — Alaska and Georgia. Alaska has ranked-choice voting and Georgia uses a snap-run-off election between the top two vote getters and shortened race to determine the winner.
In Montana, the current Legislature has prohibited ranked-choice voting.