State GOP backs off voter registration challenges

By JENNIFER McKEE Missoulian State Bureau


HELENA - The Montana Republican Party on Tuesday night announced it was abandoning its challenge of the legitimacy of thousands of Montana voter registrations.

In a letter to Vicki Zeier of the Missoula County elections office, Jacob Eaton, executive director of the Montana Republican Party, wrote that the group no longer wished to challenge thousands of Missoula County voters or any others statewide.

The letter was released to Montana reporters Tuesday night.

Eaton wrote that the party launched the challenges in “good faith,” but media reports have since suggested the challenges were an effort to suppress voter turnout.

“As a disabled combat veteran who has fought Al Queada to defend this country and our democracy and who has voted absentee en route to a war zone, I regret that my actions have been perceived as such,” Eaton wrote.

At issue is the legitimacy of some 6,000 registered Montana voters. The state Republican Party challenged the legality of those registrations last week, saying the voters had moved since they last registered and were not reregistered at their current address. The GOP challenge asked counties to verify the current address of thousands of voters, a task that would have required voters receiving a letter to prove their address.

Caleb Weaver, a spokesman for the Barack Obama campaign in Montana, said the party's decision to withdraw “proves what we have been saying for several days.”

The challenges, he said, were “desperation by a party that has brought no new ideas to the table” and, he said, had resorted to voter intimidation to win.

The challenges involved seven counties, but the vast majority of affected voters lived in two Democratic-leaning counties: Missoula and Lewis and Clark.

So far, only a few hundred letters have gone out.

The Montana Democratic Party and two challenged voters filed a lawsuit Monday asking U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy to issue a temporary restraining order halting the challenges and any new challenge efforts.

Molloy did not rule on the request Tuesday.

The lawsuit also said the challenges violated federal elections law and were a transparent effort to suppress voter turnout in Democratic counties.

Secretary of State Brad Johnson's office on Monday asked all county elections officers to stop sending out any letters to voters requesting proof of current address until Molloy ruled on the matter.

Bowen Greenwood, a spokesman for Johnson, also said that no one has ever complained to the secretary's office of widespread voter fraud based on inaccurate voter addresses.

Some 714 of the challenges involved Butte-Silver Bow residents. Mary McMahon, Butte-Silver Bow clerk and recorder, said this week the challenges are unwarranted and that the database of Montana voters is trustworthy.

“I would really like to see it stopped,” she said of the challenges.

McMahon said she had personally reviewed some of the challenged voters in her county and some “are just plain erroneous.”

For example, the GOP challenged the registration of one voter who has been politically active in Butte for 70 years. In that case, the woman moved from one apartment to another in the same complex.

Such a move would not affect the woman's voting precinct or the ballot she would receive.

When I worked as a precinct captain in a couple of elections, we first checked the voter against the rolls. If they were listed, they signed their name and were given a ballot and directed to the voting booth. If they were not listed, we asked for an ID that had their picture and their address on it. If the address were in our precinct, and they matched their ID, they were added to the provisional ballot list and given a ballot to vote. If their address on the ID were not in our precinct, we told them where to go and even arranged transportation for some. If they had no ID, we asked for a utility bill for their address with their name, or anything else that had their name for that particular address. The provisional ballot list again. So, everybody that showed up got to vote, if they had some kind of legitimate ID. There were other examples but the intent is clear. If a person showed up to vote, they got to vote.

It's my understanding that the provisional ballots were counted as just that and were then ignored because the election was not even close. Supposedly, they would have been put into the mix after extensive (even at home visits have been done) checking in the case of a really close result.

This county is now heavily Republican, but the county election board has an excellent reputation as being fair and totally on the side of the voters. To my knowledge no one ever has been accused of any kind of irregularities. We mostly get along since we have other dealings with each other the other 364 days a year.

I don't know what it will take, and who it will take to do it, but America has GOT to straighten out this business with "caging lists" and "challenges". Seems to me, if you are a citizen over 18, you should be able to vote. And advance registration requirements should be banned along with the poll tax as discriminatory.

And if we ever get rid of Ahhhhnold, who vetoed the "contract" between the 11 largest states to effectively elect the President by US popular vote, er might be able to legitimately call ourselves a DEMOCRACY.