Montana District Court Judge Mike Menahan has struck down two provisions of a campaign finance-related bill that targeted election-related outreach on college campuses and donations to campaigns for spots on the judiciary. As originally enacted, the bill blocked “political committees from conducting voter registration, ballot signature gathering, ballot collection efforts or turn-out-the-vote efforts inside a residence hall, dining facility or athletic facility on public college campuses,” the Associated Press explains. The bill was also formulated to demand that judges recuse themselves from certain court proceedings if an attorney or party in the case had given over half of the highest-allowed donation to their campaign in the last six years.
Separate from the Menahan case, there’s a currently pending federal lawsuit dealing with voting rights concerns related to the college outreach restrictions. At issue in the case in which Menahan ruled this week is the fact that Montana law demands that bills focus on single areas — “Montana’s Constitution requires that bills contain a single subject,” the Associated Press notes. In addition, state legislators aren’t permitted to amend laws to the point of departing from their originally established purposes. In this instance, Republican legislators tacked the campus outreach and judicial campaign donation provisions onto a bill that dealt with joint fundraising committees and other also unrelated topics, and they did so without fielding public comments, enacting the changes just a day before adjourning. Attorney Raph Graybill, who’s been representing plaintiffs in this case, said that Menahan’s ruling blocking these provisions “sends a clear message that the Montana legislature is not above the law.”
🚨NEW: Montana court strikes down two sections of the state’s voter suppression law #SB319, ruling that they violate the MT Constitution.
Big win for Montana voters!https://t.co/D3WZi1wtYl
— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) February 4, 2022
The Associated Press notes that Montana Republican state legislators also launched similar moves, including enacting a ban on using college ID cards for voter identification purposes. In addition, a bill that Republican state legislators passed to do away with the option to register to vote on Election Day was directly tied by state Rep. Jedediah Hinkle (R) to students having been driven to polling places to cast their ballots. Hinkle made sure to note that the group responsible for the transportation wasn’t “on our side of the aisle,” as if the attempt to use flimsy security concerns as a pretext for making it more difficult for political opponents of those in power to vote was not already clear enough. It’s on the level of the Texas legislation that banned drive-thru voting, 24-hour voting, and preemptively mailing out absentee ballot applications to voters who hadn’t asked for them — all of which could be found in Democratic-leaning areas amid recent elections.
An OVERWHELMING majority of Americans support the provisions in the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act.
Our fight is NOT over.
House Democrats will continue to push for voting rights and defend the sacred right to vote.
— House Democrats (@HouseDemocrats) January 31, 2022
