Groups working to keep same-day voter sign-up

Progressive groups are putting money and shoe leather into defeating a Republican-sponsored ballot measure that would end Election Day voter registration in Montana.

Yet the campaign for the measure, known as Legislative Referendum 126, is pretty much nonexistent.

A group called the Montana Equality Project, formed in February to support LR-126, hasn’t reported raising or spending a single cent for the campaign.

Meanwhile, the coalition of groups campaigning against it — dubbed Montanans for Free and Fair Elections — had raised $150,000 in contributions and in-kind donations by early September and continues to raise and spend money for its effort to defeat the measure, said deputy campaign manager Kate Stallbaumer.

“A lot of people didn’t know this was going to be on the ballot, so a lot of our campaign is getting out there and letting them know,” she said.

The coalition and its supporters include an array of groups that often support Democrats and various liberal causes, such as labor unions, Forward Montana, the Northern Plains Resource Council, Montana Native Voice, ACLU-Montana, Montana Conservation Voters and the Treasure State Political Action Committee, which is affiliated with Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.

LR-126, placed on the Nov. 4 ballot by the 2013 Legislature, would allow voter registration no later than the Friday before the Election Day on Tuesday, thus ending Election Day registration.

Election Day registration has been in effect in Montana since the 2006 elections. Since then, at least 26,000 people have registered and voted on various election days in Montana.

LR-126 passed the Legislature on mostly party-line votes, with Republicans in favor.

State Sen. Alan Olson, R-Roundup, who sponsored the bill putting LR-126 on the ballot, said it’s not too much to ask people to register to vote by the Friday before Election Day. He also said Election Day registration probably allows some nonresidents — such as out-of-state students attending Montana colleges — to vote.

Still, Olson acknowledged there’s no organized campaign for LR-126 and said he cared more about another controversial referendum he sponsored to ask voters to approve a “top-two” primary system, where only the top two vote-getters in the primary election for an office, regardless of political party, advance to the general election.

Republicans passed that measure in the 2013 Legislature and placed it on the Nov. 4 ballot, but a state court removed it for technical violations.

The state Republican Party platform supports LR-126. Bowen Greenwood, executive director of the party, said Wednesday the party has sent emails to its list of supporters, suggesting they vote for LR-126.

The campaign against LR-126, however, has been much more active. Montanans for Free and Fair Elections has been sending out mailers, making campaign literature drops and sending canvassers door to door to speak against the measure.

Stallbaumer said groups opposing LR-126 believe their members and all Montanans need to preserve their ability to register to vote, right up to and including Election Day.

Election Day registration allows people to vote who may have thought they were registered and intended to vote, only to find out on Election Day that they’d made a mistake and weren’t properly registered, she said.

“It’s a safeguard, an important safeguard for everyone,” Stallbaumer said. “If you look at who’s used same-day registration, it’s a wide swath of humanity.”