Two candidates have filed for U.S. Senate in the Montana Libertarian primary. Montana requires parties with ongoing ballot status to nominate by primary, but does not actually print up primary ballots unless there is a contest. See this story, which says that Montana hasn’t printed up primary ballots for any qualified party, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, since 1996, when the Reform Party had a contested primary. The story also says the Secretary of State will try to avoid a Libertarian primary and is considering listing both candidates on the November ballot.
The odd part of this story is that neither the Secretary of State, nor the legislator who is quoted in the story, seems to have thought that a good solution would be to let small qualified parties nominate by convention. The Libertarian Party has candidates for a majority of the statewide offices in Montana this year, but only in the U.S. Senate race is there more than a single candidate from that party. Thanks to Mike Fellows for the link.
MT — one more LOW population western State created by the Civil War era Elephants — to be able to control the U.S.A. gerrymander Senate.
i.e. the area should still be a territory.
Why does Montana print separate ballots for each party?
Because it’s a closed primary, so you can only select one political party ballot to cast your vote, The other ballot stays unmarked. An open primary should list everyone on multiple ballots, so you don’t vote for parties, but for candidates. Correct me if I’m wrong on this.
Montana has an open primary. There are two kinds of open primary, ones in which the voter on primary day must say publicly which party’s ballot is desired, and ones in which the voter decides in the privacy of the voting booth which party’s primary ballot to use.
An open primary is one in which any voter is free to choose any party’s primary ballot, and that describes Montana.
P.R. and App.V.
NO dangerous primaries (producing extremist monsters) are needed or wanted.
#4 In Washington, a single ballot was distributed, and the voter would select the party in the voting booth. Since Washington referred to their pick-a-party primary as a “Montana primary”, I had assumed that Montana would also use a single ballot paper.
In Montana, does the voter discard the unused ballots?
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