Please Follow us on Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, Gettr, Truth Social, Twitter

Summer is waning and Montana absentee ballots will be available for voting on October 7th, a mere 46 days away.

CI-128 has qualified to be on the ballot. This is a constitutional initiative that would amend the Montana Constitution to expressly provide a right to make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion at any stage in a pregnancy.

The Montana Secretary of State has not yet qualified CI-126 & CI-127 for the ballot, but they are expected to be qualified soon.

These are troublesome initiatives.

Montanans for Election Reform is the group behind CI-126 & CI-127. Those at the forefront of the group include Bruce Tutvedt, Doug Campbell, Frank Garner, Rob Cook, Ted Kronebusch, and Bruce Grubbs.

CI-126 amends the Montana Constitution to provide a top-four primary election. All candidates, regardless of political party, appear on one ballot. The four candidates receiving the most votes advance to the general election.

(This is oftentimes called a "jungle primary" or "open primary.")

CI-127 amends the Montana Constitution to provide that elections for certain offices must be decided by majority vote as determined as provided by law rather than by a plurality or the largest amount of the votes. If it cannot be determined who received a majority of votes because two or more candidates are tied, then the winner of the election will be determined as provided by law.

(Though there are currently no provisions in Montana law to accommodate this initiative if successful, the end result appears to be some sort of "ranked choice voting" laws being legislated.)

Montanans for Election Reform Action Fund is bringing big money to their initiative party according to a look at their campaign finance filings with the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices office. A few highlights include the following:

185,000 from Action Now, Inc of Houston,TX https://ballotpedia.org/Action_Now_Initiative

177,000 from Action Now, Inc of Houston, TX

100,000 from Sixteen Thirty Fund https://www.sixteenthirtyfund.org

30,250 in-kind from Sixteen Thirty Fund

500,000 from Article IV of Arlington, VA https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/article-iv,862820532/

700,000 from Article IV of Arlington, VA

500,000 from Article IV of Arlington, VA

259,000 from Article IV of Arlington, VA

200,000 from Article IV of Arlington, VA

500,000 from Article IV of Arlington, VA

500,000 from Unite America PAC, Inc of Denver, CO https://www.uniteamerica.org

700,000 from Unite America PAC, Inc of Denver, CO

500,000 from Unite America PAC, Inc of Denver, CO

It's not uncommon to have Montana elections influenced and bought by out-of-state interests and dark money.

Interestingly, Doug Campbell responded to a recent Montanan's for Limited Government Facebook post about CI-126 & CI-127 with the following statements (in part):

* "If we don’t implement this Citizens’ Initiative as worded, then the state will be sued (and lose) on it’s (sic) currently un-Constitutional method of running primaries because it excludes nearly 1/2 of Montana voters, or forces them to associate with one despicable political party or another. When the state loses that suit, the legislature will be the ones to write the language to apply the fix, likely with language which is less favorable to all voters."

* "I am one of myriad future plaintiffs in that suit, should CI-126 not pass."

* "I have won _every_ single suit I have brought against the State of Montana, and I will win this one too."

Not only does the Montanans for Election Reform group have plans for the November ballot, they also seemingly are prepared to go to court. Lawfare is the tactic of the Left, so that may be the biggest tell yet of who these people truly are.

Montanans must ask themselves if they want to preserve their elections, or allow outsiders to determine how Montana elections run.

They must ask themselves if they are prepared for the consequences of CI-126 & CI-127 passing.

‘NO AD’ subscription for CDM!  Sign up here and support real investigative journalism and help save the republic!‘

Here are few of the receipts to show proof. Please access Montana CERS and the Federal Elections Commission and do your own research.

Article completed through collaboration with Montanan's for Limited Government @mt4ltdgov

SEE BELOW FOR ONE CITIZEN RESPONSE

Thanks for the info.

Just a few remarks:

From my calculation of the figures you provided, $4,351,250 has been put forth by out-of-state PAC’s to promote these Constitutional Initiatives (CI’s). That’s a lot of money so expect an onslaught of ads this fall.

Doug Campbell’s remarks on Facebook, which I have verified, are disturbing. He is outright threatening the people of Montana (and the legislature) with legal action if we do not pass these initiatives. For most people threats only tend to anger and spur them to any and all action in combatting the threat. In this Mr. Campbell has done the CI opponents a favor.

In regards to suing Montana for having “unconstitutional” primaries…he’s just now determined they are unconstitutional?? Montana’s primaries have been run the same way since at least the early 1970’s when the 1972 constitution was ratified, if not before! Now, 52 years later, they are unconstitutional? This would be ‘lawfare’ in the extreme.

What many people don’t know, but should, is that Louisiana has an election scheme similar to what CI-126/127 proposes in that it has a requirement that the winner receives greater than 50% of the vote (a majority) to secure the victory. In Louisiana, if no one wins a majority then the top 2 vote getters head to a run-off election in early December to decide the winner. What’s the problem with a run-off in December? The problem is that ~20% of the time they have run-off elections (in December mind you) and subsequently delayed their selection of US Congressional representation until then. Why is this bad? Because Congressional orientation and committee assignments (among other important happenings) occurs in November/December. By having no Congressional representative determined until December the congressional representative/senator (and people of that specific district/state) are at a distinct disadvantage on committee assignments, orientation, “setting up shop”, etc. as compared to all other representatives/senators. This is a very contentious issue with the people of Louisiana and they are looking at ways to rid themselves of it. This begs the question; Why do certain people in Montana want to go to this kind of system? Is this ignorance on their part or by design?

Here in Montana having a runoff in December for legislative seats would be an unmitigated disaster and place our state representatives and state senators at an even greater disadvantage than congressional representatives. Why? Because in Montana, political parties caucus in November, right after the election, to select their leadership for the next legislative session which starts on the 1^st Monday of January. Not being able to caucus with your party denies the people of your district a choice as to who will be the Speaker of the House/President of the Senate, Majority Leaders, Minority Leaders, Whips, etc. Also, that legislator who must go through a run-off is prohibited from submitting draft legislation to the Legislative Services Division until a winner is determined thereby denying their constituents an equal footing in developing legislation to bring forth during the session. In addition, orientation would be delayed for those in a run-off so they would then have to hurry through the process and housing in Helena (or lack thereof) during the session could become an issue as well. I’m sure no one wants their state legislator sleeping in their car or a flop house during the session.

Keep in mind that all the above problems associated with a run-off is predicated upon HAVING a run-off system. Since CI-127 leaves it up to the legislature to determine a method of ensuring a majority winner we could end up with either a run-off system or even a Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) system which brings on a whole other set of problems too numerous to mention here.

Here are a few things to think about that no one is mentioning:

What if CI-126 passes but CI-127 doesn’t?

We would have up to 4 candidates going to the general election with the winner being selected by a plurality. In reality we could have a governor leading the state of Montana who receives a little more than 25% of the vote. What kind of “mandate” would the governor have then?

What if CI-127 passes but CI-126 doesn’t?

We would still have the current primary system but all the problems created by a run-off or RCV system if there are independent or 3^rd party candidates on the ballot.

IMO, if ballot access for non-party and independents was the issue of the CI-126/127 proponents why didn’t they attempt to amend current ballot access laws on the books to make it even easier to gain access to the ballot? That, to me, is the cheaper and easier way of gaining ballot access. Since they didn’t go this route, and most of the money for their cause is coming from out-of-state RCV supporters, that should tell you what they are really after.

Bottom Line: NO on CI-126 and CI-127.

And NO on CI-128!