Various Montana newspapers and broadcast stations are starting to cover the Green Party lawsuit filed August 13 against the ballot access law for new parties. See this story.
Various Montana newspapers and broadcast stations are starting to cover the Green Party lawsuit filed August 13 against the ballot access law for new parties. See this story.
Montana has 100 House districts. Because of the distribution requirement the Green Party collected nearly 7500 signatures from just 47 (less than half) of the districts. Were a voter from another district to approach to sign the petition, he is wasting the time of the circulator. Considering that the petition is circulated to less than half the state, the 7500 signatures is equivalent to 601,000 signatures in California or 406,000 in Texas.
The Montana Democratic Party in its court filing characterized the Green Party petition as flooding county election officials with less than a modicum of signatures.
If the Green Party had deliberately set out to gather 50 signatures from each district, thus producing a total of 5000 signatures, meeting the statewide total, they would not have met the requirement in any district. If they doubled that and collected 100 per district, they would have only met the district threshold in 22 districts. Only with 107 signatures per district (10,700 statewide) perfectly evenly distributed would they have enough in the necessary 34 districts.
It is more difficult to be sure that there enough verified signatures in multiple areas. A successful drive might try to gather 50% extra signatures statewide. But to be sure to gather enough signatures in multiple areas one might try to gather 70% or 80% extra signatures.
The distribution requirement is based on votes for the winning statewide gubernatorial candidate. In 2016, the Democrat candidate Steve Bullock had 4% more votes than the Republican candidate, but the margins varied wildly. Bullock received 70% of the vote in Deer Lodge County vs. 16% in Carter County.
Montana house districts are small (about 10,000 persons). It is quite likely that signatures for multiple districts will be collected by a single circulator. In Montana, petitions are verified by county election officials, who sort out which district each voter resides in. In Montana a circulator in front of a Walmart might collect equal numbers of signatures from two adjacent district, but only qualify in one.
To reach the required district thresholds in the 11 Missoula districts requires as many signatures as it does to reach the limits in the 14 Yellowstone (Billings) districts. Presumably it is as easy or hard to collect signatures in Billings as it is Missoula, and each district has about the same number of voters. What interest does the state of Montana have in encouraging signature collection in Billings rather than Missoula?
There may well be a political bias as well. Presumably, parties like the Constitution and Libertarian parties might find more signers in Republican areas, while the Green Party would do better in Democratic areas. If there is a Democratic governor, more conservative parties might qualify. While with a Republican governor, the Green Party would find it easier to qualify.
If there is a strong independent candidate for governor, the distribution requirement might plummet, while if one of the major parties puts up a scandal-plagued candidate the requirement might increase.
The distribution requirement in Montana is not arbitrary and capricious – it is inane.