HELENA — Across Montana, election officials are warning they’ve seen a number of voters tripped up by a new state requirement this year: that mail-in voters write their birth year when signing their ballot envelopes.
Earlier this year, the Montana Legislature passed House Bill 719, which implemented the requirement – seen by supporters as a way to improve election security. The bill took effect October 1, so the November 4 municipal election is the first one where it applies.
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Unlike most counties in the state, Lewis & Clark County got an opportunity earlier this year to “soft-launch” the birth year requirement because Helena had a municipal primary and special school district election in September. Election officials included a space for voters to write in their birth year, though their ballot wasn’t rejected if they didn’t include it.
Now, the requirement is being fully enforced. If a voter doesn’t include their birth year, their ballot will be rejected and they’ll be required to fix the issue in order for their vote to count.
“If you're willing to actually take the time and vote and send your stuff in to us, we want to make sure it's accounted for,” said Lewis and Clark County Treasurer-Clerk & Recorder Amy Reeves, the county’s election administrator. “We want to make sure that we can do the best we can to make sure that that citizen has their ballot taken care of and counted properly.”
Reeves says the county sent out about 21,000 ballots for the city elections in Helena and East Helena. As of Wednesday morning, they’ve received and accepted 5,550 of those. Only 44 ballots have been rejected.
“Our rejected ballots at this point are not out of the ordinary,” said Reeves. “We do have a little bit more this year because of the birth year.”
Of the 44 rejected ballots, Reeves said 32 were stopped because the voter didn’t include their birth year. In those cases, her office is trying to reach out directly to the voters to get them to come in and fix it.
“We do call, we email – anything that we can do to contact those people, we do,” she said. “And we are proactive on that; as soon as we get those issues, we are already researching and getting hold of those individuals.”
Lewis & Clark County has seen far fewer ballots rejected than some other counties in this election. Officials in Missoula and Yellowstone Counties have each reported more than 700 rejected ballots.
Reeves is hopeful that’s a sign that the outreach her office did has gotten through to voters. In addition to putting a space for the birth year on the September ballot, Lewis and Clark County included a note explaining the new law. They also mailed out flyers reminding voters of the change.
The September election covered Helena and the Helena Valley, but not East Helena. The November election is including East Helena but not the unincorporated areas around the county. Reeves said the county is planning to keep informing voters of the birth-year requirement into the 2026 election cycle.
“We're hoping to send more of these flyers out; if not, we'll be doing our colorful pamphlets that go inside of the ballots,” she said.
Ballots for the municipal election must be returned to the county elections office by 8 p.m. next Tuesday, November 4. If you still haven't returned your ballot, it's likely too late to put it in the mail now. Election officials are recommending you bring your ballot down in person to drop it off.
