HELENA — In the last few weeks, Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen’s office has been working to bring attention to its efforts to increase reviews of voter registrations, with the goal of removing ineligible voters from the rolls. It’s an initiative that hasn’t been without controversy.
Residents across the state received postcards from Jacobsen’s office, showing her standing next to President Donald Trump and announcing she would partner with the federal government to step up efforts to verify registered voters are U.S. citizens. Now, they’re releasing more details about what they’ve found so far.
(Watch the video for more on the reaction to the review of voter registrations.)
Last week, the Secretary of State’s Office announced it had so far identified 23 voter registrations as “potential non-citizens.” It came after they started checking voters against the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database – a federal system that lets government agencies compare a person’s information against data from sources like the Social Security Administration and U.S. naturalization services. It has previously been used to help verify people’s eligibility for things like federal benefits, but the Trump administration announced it would let states expand its use to check voter eligibility.
During a legislative interim committee last week, Austin James, Jacobsen’s elections director, gave lawmakers more details about the findings. He said almost all of the 23 were legal permanent residents but not citizens, and that they hadn’t found evidence those people had become citizens since.
“We're talking about an uncomfortable amount of elections that were participated in,” James told lawmakers. “That is hundreds of thousands of voters who are Montanans that had their rights trampled upon.”
Montana’s constitution already says an eligible voter must be a U.S. citizen, and the state’s voter registration form requires people to certify that they are citizens. James said, in several of these cases, the person registering actually said on the form that they were not citizens. He said in one such case, election officials made a mistake by allowing the person to vote during the Election Day voter registration window. In others, he said the people were added to the active voter list as the result of a “loophole” that arose because provisional voters were included on the rolls – a loophole he said would be resolved by House Bill 423, passed by the Legislature last year.
Montana currently has just under 785,000 registered voters. The Secretary of State’s Office says they have not completed their SAVE review of all voters yet.
As the office steps up its reviews of registered voters, some advocates have raised concerns that they could be flagging people who actually are eligible to vote in the state.
Earlier this month, the Democratic National Committee sent letters to a number of states, including Montana, that are cooperating with the Trump administration’s efforts to remove potentially ineligible voters from the rolls. They warned that removing voters the federal government identified could be violating a law that requires giving notice before taking someone off the rolls because they’re believed to have moved.
“A systematic purge of registered voters under the 45-Day Removal Demand would likely lead to errors that remove registrants who remain eligible under state law,” the letter said.
While the letter came from the national party, Montana Democratic Party chair Shannon O’Brien told MTN the state party also has objections to how Jacobsen’s office is handling voter roll maintenance. She said, if they find voters with something questionable in their registration, they should have an opportunity to respond before being removed completely.
“Our highest concern is that people will be removed from the voter rolls without notice, without knowing that they've been removed, and they'll be sitting at home waiting for their ballot to show up in the mail and it will not be showing up because they've been removed – and they're a legal person to vote,” she said.
A spokesperson for Jacobsen’s office said the DNC letter contained “severe misinformation” and “inaccuracies,” and that Montana was in full compliance with federal and state laws.
Meanwhile, the postcards the office sent out also drew questions, from some who said they appeared to be political in nature, rather than official. However, Montana’s top political cop dismissed a complaint that challenged them as improper.
Montana Commissioner of Political Practices Chris Gallus wrote Friday that he typically wouldn’t expand on his decision to dismiss a complaint, but that he had received a number of questions about the postcards and wanted to give a full explanation. He pointed out that a previous commissioner ruled the then-secretary of state hadn’t violated the Code of Ethics by using public funds to produce public service announcements featuring their likeness. He said he had similarly dismissed a complaint about postcards from Gov. Greg Gianforte’s office, promoting a property tax rebate.
Gallus said, despite “[t]he fact that the Secretary of State's recent mailing could be viewed as partisan,” it didn’t attempt to create support for a candidate or a group of candidates.
“[I]t is clear to me that Secretary Jacobsen is performing an official duty without any sort of designed electoral element over which COPP properly exercises jurisdiction,” he wrote.
As initially reported by Lee Newspapers, a state public records release indicates that the Secretary of State’s Office sent out more than 460,000 of the postcards, with a total cost of just under $200,000 for printing and postage.
