Why is the GOP so Paranoid About Montana Voters?

It’s truly a mystery right now watching the incredible efforts by Montana’s Secretary of State, Christi Jacobsen, to try and disqualify voters who signed citizen initiatives from being counted.   Their twisted logic and faulty interpretation of the Montana Constitution reflects a deep paranoia on the part of the Republicans toward Montana’s citizens and voters. The More

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Photograph Source: Tracey Elizabeth – CC BY 2.0

It’s truly a mystery right now watching the incredible efforts by Montana’s Secretary of State, Christi Jacobsen, to try and disqualify voters who signed citizen initiatives from being counted.   Their twisted logic and faulty interpretation of the Montana Constitution reflects a deep paranoia on the part of the Republicans toward Montana’s citizens and voters.

The burning question is “what are they so afraid of?”

It doesn’t take a long memory to recall how the GOP went into Trump-fueled hysterics over election integrity in 2020, in which Republicans won every statewide office.

Other than mimicking Trump’s endless and baseless “stolen election” lies, one might wonder what they intended to find and why?  What, were the Republicans going to say their own election victories were illegitimate and challenge the right of their own candidates to hold office?  Were they going to call for endless recounts so maybe a hapless Democrat could win at least one statewide office?

Since none of that sounds even marginally reasonable, it appears the GOP simply doesn’t trust the good people of Montana — nor the hundreds of election workers who have and continue to dedicate themselves to free, open, and dang near error-free elections as they have for many years.

Were one to look at what’s going on now — and has gone on in the past — it seems pretty clear that the Republicans are trying their best to gut Montana’s constitutionally-guaranteed right to the citizen initiative process.  And why might they being doing so?  Because the GOP cannot exert the kind of absolute control over citizen initiatives that they can and do enforce in the legislative and executive branches.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize Montana’s citizens have passed initiatives the legislature never would have let out of the first committee.  Going way back to 1978, the good and sensible voters of Montana passed an initiative to mandate that citizens had the right to vote on the installation of nuclear power plants in our state.  That was overturned on a GOP party-line vote in the 2021 legislative session, transferring the authority away from the citizens and to, of course, the legislature. 

Then there was the citizens initiative to ban the use of cyanide heap leach gold mining Montanans approved in 1998, which still stands despite numerous efforts to overturn it.  Does anyone believe the legislature would ever have passed a law to prohibit the mining industry from poisoning our waters with cyanide?

Or how about the citizens initiatives legalizing the use of both medicinal (2004) and recreational (2020) marijuana?  The legislature would never have approved such laws and was sued for wading into the initiative’s language after the election to weaken and alter the provisions the citizens overwhelmingly approved.

Now, Jacobsen’s office is being sued — this time by proponents of three pending initiatives. CI-128 asks voters to approve a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion access, CI-126, which instills open primaries, and C1-127, which requires a candidate to receive over 50% of the vote to win.  Ironically, the proponents of the election initiatives are Jacobsen’s fellow Republicans.

It’s a foundational truth that power never relinquishes power without a fight.

What’s strange is that Montana’s Republican Secretary of State, Attorney General, and Governor all seem to fear their almost unassailable hold on power is somehow being threatened by the very citizens they were elected to serve — not command, control, and intimidate for exercising their constitutional right to the initiative process. 

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